Looking for a Forecast system…Is Quantrix good?
Hi,
I am new to Quantrix and would like to know if its good to be a forecasting/budgeting system. I have prepared a list of features that I need from a system like that as listed below. Can someone help me to figure out if Quantrix is a good fit or not.
Features:
- Reporting:
- Flexible Reporting: If I have 2 cubes that share some dimensions, will they be created in the same Database? And is it possible to report from both Cubes together in a single report, without creating a third roll-up cube? In SAP it used to be a hassle, not anymore after HANA.
- Connectivity: Can the system be connected to Power BI or BOBJ on prem.
- ETL:
- Loading Actuals/Drivers to the Cubes: When we are done creating our data models, do we have the capability to load the Actuals and any drivers into the model that might not be coming from user input but are present in our SQL database?
- Users Control Bringing of Actuals: Do we have ability to give users control for bringing the actuals and locking the past month for anymore inputs?
- Transformations: ETL – Can system handle necessary transformations for moving data from RDBMS structures to Cube?
- Planning:
- Custom Functions and Calculations: Does the system has capability to create functions with custom code, that can be used to generate planning records, using drivers and other inputs?
So, let’s say if we have forecast saved for a year by months, and escalation rates are saved for five future years, can we built a function that will take these inputs and escalate current year to future years and save the records? Also, once the function is built I would like it to be placed on users Excel file so they can run it on demand. They would only maintain first year and escalations and hit this button to get the 5 years forecast.
This is a simple example, but we can use functions to remove a lot manual work. So please let me know.
So once built can it be run without even loading the data into the Excel? Can I have a book or web page that only have all the functions/buttons that users can come and run? And can one button be configured to run multiple of these functions?
I am imagining a system where users will enter all the required inputs and then they will come to a web-page or another Excel where they will run a bunch of functions that will generate bunch of records for them and complete the forecasting process. Makes sense?
- Comments: Can a planning user enter comments for a record?
- Planning on a Characteristic instead of Key Figure: Is it possible to allow changes to the dimension or characteristic instead of Key Figure:
So let’s say if I want user to select if a line is Tax Exempt or not, I want them to select from 3-4 values: Exempt (Y), Not Exempt (Blank or N) or Partially Exempt (P). Is the system capable to do this?
Account
Amount
Tax Exempt
810011
$400
Y
- Locking: Does the system allow locking of data? For example if I want to lock months that are in past, so that no one can enter anything on these months. Or as per point 1 above, if the records are calculated, I would not want users to be interacting with those calculated results, so they must be locked. They could enter some offsets but on a slightly different characteristic.
Oh, and regarding your original question in the header:
Looking for a Forecast system…Is Quantrix good?
It is wicked awesome! ;^)