Accounting: What the Numbers Mean 9th Edition by Wayne W McManus, Daniel F Viele, David H Marshall

Exercise 84

Budgeting software review, collaborative project: Internet assignment

Form a group of three or four students to research, evaluate, and report on software solutions available to support the budgeting needs of an organization. Choose three planning/budgeting products from the following list of company Web sites, and review the information about the software solutions available on each company’s Web site. The list provided is meant to serve only as a starting point for this case; it is not a comprehensive listing of all budgeting software tools on the market. In fact, you are encouraged to search for other products and include them in your analysis.

Your information gathering should focus on things such as company history, product features and functionality, for what size organization the product is designed, product scalability, technology requirements, budgeting process employed by the system, customer references and/or testimonials, product demos, training, and/or other services available for implementation. After you have compiled information about each product, write a summary report that provides a comparative assessment of the three products.

Software Company	Web Site Address
Applix, Inc.	www.applix.com
Centage Corporation	www.centage.com
Clarity Systems	www.claritysystems.com
Cognos Incorporated	www.cognos.com
Infor Global Solutions	www.extensity.com
Hyperion Solutions Corporation	www.hyperion.com
Microsoft FRx Software	www.microsoft.com/forecaster
Prophix Software	www.prophix.com
RAC Software, Inc.	www.racsoft.com
SAS Financial Intelligence	www.sas.com/solutions/financial