SYDNEY, Australia, Oct. 31, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The voice of the BI and analytics community has officially spoken with today’s release of The BI & Analytics Survey 23 by software selection and strategy experts, BARC.
It’s been another record year for Phocas Software continuing to outperform BI competitors on many KPIs in its peer groups. Phocas scored 100% customer satisfaction1 and received a recommendation2 score of 97% from its users.
Phocas, which started life as BI software, has recently expanded its portfolio to include 3-statement financial reporting and budgeting and forecasting. The company sees the combination of BI and financial planning and analytics (FP&A) as the future of mid-market businesses’ data and reporting needs.
In this year’s BARC survey, 62% of Phocas customers reported that they already use Phocas for budgeting and planning, and 31% plan to use it in the future. Fifty-one percent of Phocas customers already use Phocas for financial consolidation, and 28% plan to use it in the future.
Phocas co-founder and CEO Myles Glashier said, “Our customers want to bring the key players in their businesses into business planning and analysis initiatives to be more inclusive and responsive to customers and shifting market demands. Activities such as building the annual budget, forecasting, workforce planning, as well as visual reporting and month-end close can now be done in Phocas. We’re super excited about the benefits of one system where data comes from trusted sources and can be presented and used by everyone across a company.”
According to Business Partner Institute’s 2022 The FP&A Market Guide, which features Phocas, “Third Generation FP&A software is delivered as a service and offers a user-centric design, low cost, shorter implementation times, many self-service features, native ERP integration, and a quick/high ROI. The typical annual TCO of a third-generation FP&A solution is US$15k to $25k, with a one-time implementation fee of US$10k or less. These 3rd Gen tools made FP&A software a viable solution for small to midmarket businesses. Although Microsoft Excel is still the most used FP&A tool, this last generation of products helps you with overcoming spreadsheet issues in a variety of ways by creating governance, business user collaboration and offering full web-based modelling and reporting.”
“When jobs come up that require numbers or data, people immediately think of spreadsheets, but they are not always the best tools for the job. Spreadsheets are not easy to build, and they are prone to errors and version confusion. They are often locked down or have formulas that people don’t understand, and they make some people feel powerful and others feel powerless. Spreadsheets don’t bring people together and make them feel good,” said Glashier.
The BARC 2023 survey reported that with an average of 31% of employees using Phocas BI, compared to the overall survey average of 21%, Phocas is more widely used across its customers’ companies than most of its rivals.
“Software that is actually used, and is beneficial, and can be employed in varied ways throughout a company is what gets our teams really excited. We are solving the data nightmares for mid-market businesses, bringing people together and making them feel good about data,” said Glashier.
The BI & Analytics Survey 23 found that over 90% of customers use Phocas for reporting, dashboards and ad hoc query. Its use in business departments dominates demographic survey feedback. Almost all customers (95%) use the product in sales, 90% in management, followed by 60% in procurement and finance and 62% in marketing.
It also reported that Phocas’ performance in the Innovation KPIs, especially the increasingly important Operational BI, are remarkable for a BI and analytics specialist of its size. This shows that smaller companies can adapt their software to market and customer needs and develop it further. The company recently launched a budgeting product to complement its BI offering and help customers to implement additional BI and analytics scenarios.
“Phocas is ranked number one in several KPIs,” said Carsten Bange, founder of BARC. “The software’s consistent performance speaks to Phocas’ ability to deliver software that meets customer expectations and needs. For the last six years, Phocas has had the highest proportion of customers saying they would definitely recommend the software to others. This is an impressive achievement in such a competitive market, especially when customers are expecting more and more from their BI tool each year.”
More about the BARC Survey
From March to June this year, almost 2,000 people provided detailed feedback about 24 BI tools and solutions, including Domo, Looker, Microsoft Power BI, QlikView, SAP Analytics Cloud and TARGIT. They rated the software across 34 KPIs, making BARC the largest BI user survey in the world.
The survey features a range of different types of BI and analytics tools so BARC uses peer groups to help identify competing products and allow fair and useful comparisons.
Click here to download the highlights report of Phocas’ results in The BI & Analytics Survey 23 and to see how Phocas compares to other BI solutions on the market.
About Phocas
Phocas is a business planning and analytics platform that empowers companies to make better business decisions. Phocas offers robust solutions for analytics, budgeting and forecasting, and financial statements that work seamlessly together to help businesses report, budget, and act faster by putting data in decision-makers' hands. Phocas comes with out-of-the-box metrics, powerful interactive dashboards, and broad functionality to provide immediate benefits and adoption. Users can customize the software to meet their unique analytics and reporting needs. Learn more at www.phocassoftware.com.
1 Based on the aggregate of "Very satisfied" and ''Somewhat satisfied"
2 Based on the aggregate of "Definitely" and "Probably."
