In 2019 we continued to execute on our vision end to end performance management for Power BI and Excel:
Handling 3-digit new customer numbers and a growth of 400% YOY meant dealing with a variety of real-life requirements that none of us could have originally predicted. In this context we would like to thank all of our customers who made it possible and embarked with us on this adventure of taking analytics and planning processes “to the next level”.
We also would like to take the opportunity to thank our technology partner Microsoft that not only added ground-breaking features to the technology stack that Acterys integrates with (Azure, Power BI & Excel) but also supported us brilliantly with their product and marketing teams.
Finally, a big shout out to our development & product teams around the world that put in a massive effort to cater for this growth and achieve a fantastic record of 99% up-time.
A lot of work this year happened under the hood focused on scale and support of global, location-specific requirements but also many “visible” new features were added. Here is a short overview:
The new Cube Wizard features enables business users without special IT skills to build a professional star schema data model optimized for performance management and planning with only a few clicks exactly to their needs.
Linking information is a key feature for Master Data Management which is now an area that many of our enterprise customers use Acterys for. In addition to free edits for a data model, power users and admins can now restrict the usage for particular attributes to content in another dimension. For example: to specify the account type for an account, users can only select from the available account types in another dimension.
One of the sexiest features this year: as opposed to traditional entering of numbers user can just drag on a chart to enter plan values or simulate drivers.
The new Table Editor is a super fast, light weight Power BI visual that enables users to edit Acterys dimensions and relational tables directly in Power BI that take into account new features like linked dimensions and also supports bulk edit.
To support our clients with with special character sets e.g. Chinese, Arabic, etc. Acterys now fully supports Unicode characters in all components (back-end database, Acterys Modeller and front ends Power BI visuals/Apps & Excel Add-in.
In addition to using the default Azure tenant that comes with Acterys, users have now also the option to use their own Azure tenant or an on-premise SQL Server for performance management and planning in Power BI.
The new Power BI template Apps for QuickBooks, WorkflowMax and Xero | Xero Practice Manager were really a little revolution in the space, that in only one month after launch have already seen hundreds of users. Within minutes you can add near unlimited numbers of cloud company entities from the supported ERP systems profit from ready-made interactive, consolidated insights and performance management in Power BI. Try it out here:
Xero Practice Manager WorkflowMax
As opposed to just serving raw API data as most other solutions do, Acterys provides the user with a professional data model that intelligently combines related records and includes financial logic. So, for example, users have access to all the related details of a transaction that is not available in the ERP API table
PDF Distribution with Acterys & Power BI data
Interactive Power BI reports are a game changer but for some requirements you just want to provide users with recurring reports with a static PDF via email. This is exactly what the PDF distribution feature in the Acterys Add-in does.
Acterys completely automates the process of data synchronization and reports with a lot of smarts and workflow in the process to ensure clean and accurate data. Users can focus on analysis of the most current data possible and don’t have to worry about update steps.
Again, an absolute ground breaker and a unique new feature: one of the most dreaded tasks for finance pros is managing inter-company eliminations. Acterys’ new automated AI assisted inter-company elimination automates this completely. Inter-company transactions are automatically recognized and added to an adjustment scenario. Users have an unparalleled audit trail of exactly seeing every detail and eliminating how a consolidated value was calculated.
Single company or consolidated results in any currency? No problem with Acterys’ multi-currency handling features that automatically links in data from online Foreign Exchange services and correctly applies them based on the requirements of the specific account (EOM, average rate etc.)
Our background for the last 15 years was enterprise analytics systems for large companies. This knowledge has been built in to Acterys and is now available to SMB clients to handle >100 companies and >1m journals (per month!). Built on the market leading Microsoft Azure platform enabling unparalleled security and scale. Our new optional, high performance tier enables you to profit from gigantic processing power, geo-replication (running copies at different data centers around the world) and guaranteed up-time.
The new Acterys Power BI Apps only require a web browser. So, previous limitations with missing features on Mac OS (Power BI Desktop not available, Missing data connectivity in Mac Excel) are not an issue anymore. For those users that still prefer some of the Windows-only features we now offer very cost-effective Windows virtual machine subscriptions that perfectly run on Apple.
We can’t reveal too many details at this stage, but in the following road map overview you get a little taste of what’s coming next year:
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