The built-in reports of today's accounting information systems rarely provide all of the information needed to manage business operations, but modern business performance measurement tools can make planning, measurement, reporting, and control processes much more effective. During this session, your instructor will review some of the top third-party tools to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the budgeting and forecasting process - Microsoft Forecaster, Budget Maestro, PROPHIX, and OutlookSoft - along with some of the top business performance measurement and information reporting solutions - Microsoft FRx, BizExcelerator, Crystal Reports, F9, PROPHIX, and Business Objects. Important concepts, such as data warehouses, data mining, business intelligence, EVA analysis, and balanced scorecards will be discussed to improve your understanding. Your instructor will also show you how to enhance and supplement analysis and reporting using Microsoft Excel and how to speed up and improve information retrieval processes using open database connectivity (ODBC). Using PivotTables, charts, and PivotCharts, coupled with ODBC, may be all that is necessary to get the information that you need from your financial and operational systems. By the end of the day, you will be familiar with the tools and processes necessary to provide your organization or your clients with the information retrieval, analysis, reporting, and planning capabilities required to manage business more effectively.

"One of the best CPE courses I've taken." T.D., CPA PA

"The program was a great experience." J.H., CPA TN

• Understand the concepts of data warehouses, data mining, and business intelligence
• Use ODBC to connect to and extract data from financial systems
• Use PivotTables to quickly summarize and report data
• Understand features of charts and PivotCharts that are useful for information analysis and reporting
• Review some of the industry leading products for analysis and reporting
  
• Review some of the leading budgeting and forecasting applications
  
• Publish and control reports internally and via the Web