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11.02.11

Abacist Group Wins Adaptive Planning’s Top Partner of 2011 award at the annual Accelerate Conference

Abacist Group is proud to announce that Adaptive Planning has for the second year in a row awarded Abacist Group their Top Partner Award for providing outstanding service. Bill Aiken, Principal & CEO of Abacist Group, accepted the award from Rob Hull, President of Adaptive Planning, at Adaptive’s 2011 Accelerate user group conference in Dallas, Tx. Abacist Group was recognized for its role implementing Adaptive Planning’s CPM software at various clients located through the U.S. and Canada.

Adaptive Planning is the leader in on-demand budgeting, forecasting, and reporting solutions. They make it easy for companies worldwide to improve financial agility, strengthen collaboration, and drive better-informed and more strategic business decisions. Best of all, unlike traditional enterprise software alternatives, Adaptive Planning’s innovative solution is affordable, deploys quickly, and does not require new hardware, software, or IT support. Powerful planning and reporting have never been easier.

Abacist Group is a management consulting firm focused on Corporate Performance Management. Abacist Group’s clients realize that a strong foundation in Corporate Performance Management (CPM), Planning & Analysis provides them with a competitive advantage. However, most companies lack the fully-realized triple-play of possessing the right tools, processes and people. Abacist Group helps clients rapidly gain CPM acuity through building and implementing CPM tools, optimizing Corporate Planning & Analysis business process, and ensuring that the client's human talent possesses the right skills & knowledge to execute their CPM vision. If a client lacks the capacity to realize their vision fully using internal talent, Abacist Group has deep CPM operating experience to help augment the client's efforts with Interim and Fractional Staff as well. Abacist Group is a certified implementation partner of Adaptive Planning and the winner of Adaptive Planning’s Top Partner Award for both 2011 and 2010.

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04.02.11

Join Abacist Group and Adaptive Planning for Breakfast Seminar for Finance Executives “Scaling New Heights in Performance Management” to be held April 20, 2011 at the Sheraton Dallas hotel in Downtown Dallas

Abacist Group invites you to learn about the latest trends and best practices in Financial Planning & Analysis and Corporate Performance Management. Designed for senior finance leaders, including CFO’s, VP’s of Finance, and other finance professionals, these seminars present the opportunity to discover FP&A best practices, learn from industry experts, hear customer success stories, see detailed product demonstrations, and network with peers.

As the economy continues to recover, surveys show that finance teams in companies of all sizes are now focusing on the biggest opportunities for creating strategic value -- and in particular, on how they can optimize their business performance management.

Do you agree with your peers? Would you like to be able to dramatically streamline and improve the effectiveness of your FP&A cycle, resulting in higher revenues, lower expenses, and improved competitiveness?

Join us for an educational seminar that will review best practices for optimizing each step in the performance management cycle -- budgeting and planning, monitoring and managing against KPIs, variance reporting and analysis, what-if analysis, and re-forecasting / rolling forecasts.

Discover the key obstacles that are keeping finance organizations from achieving their potential, and how companies of all sizes have overcome the hurdles with modern, on-demand planning and reporting solutions -- solutions that are powerful yet easy to use, deploy in just weeks, and cost 75% less than traditional on-premise software.

Hear how leading companies and nonprofits, such as American Red Cross, CORT Business Services, Konica Minolta, Pep Boys, NetSuite, Vail Resorts, and many more, have truly transformed their businesses by integrating their FP&A processes and underlying technologies -- quickly, easily, and affordably.

Register Today!

Earn CPE credit and learn how your organization can:
 

• Reduce budgeting time by 90%–while eliminating errors
• Deliver timely and accurate re–forecasts & what–if–scenarios
• Drive better business decisions through improved reporting and analysis
• Improve company-wide participation and alignment
• Increase the strategic value of finance

This event is co-sponsored by Abacist Group, a management consulting firm based in Dallas, Texas dedicated to providing services to their clients that promote higher performance and sustainable growth.  Abacist Group is a certified implementation partner for Adaptive Planning software and was recognized as Adaptive Planning's Top Partner of 2010.

Sign up today for this complimentary seminar and learn how you, too, can transform your business performance management, by adopting best practice processes and tools, as you navigate 2011 and beyond.

Agenda

8:30–9:00 a.m.      Breakfast
9:00–9:10 a.m.      Welcome
9:10–9:40 a.m.      Trends and Best Practices in Budgeting   Bill Aiken, Abacist Group
9:40–10:10 a.m.    Adaptive Planning Overview   Sandra Stearns, Adaptive Planning
10:10–10:40 a.m.  Customer Highlights
10:40–11:10 a.m.  Adaptive Planning Demonstration
11:10–11:30 a.m.  Questions & Answers 

Register Today!

         02.25.11

Bill Aiken, Principal & CEO of Abacist Group to present at Adaptive Planning's Breakfast Seminar Series for Finance Executives “Trends and Best Practices in Financial Planning & Analysis” to be held March 24, 2011  at the Austin, Tx Sheraton at the Capitol

Abacist Group invites you to learn about the latest trends and best practices in Financial Planning & Analysis and Corporate Performance Management.  Designed for senior finance leaders, including CFO’s, VP’s of Finance, and other finance professionals, these seminars present the opportunity to discover FP&A best practices, learn from industry experts, hear customer success stories, see detailed product demonstrations, and network with peers.

Adaptive Planning is the worldwide leader in on-demand budgeting, forecasting, and reporting solutions for companies of all sizes. Gartner recently recognized Adaptive Planning as ranked #1 for Customer Satisfaction among leading Enterprise Performance Management applications.  Adaptive Planning's solutions allow finance and management teams to obtain real-time visibility into performance metrics, streamline FP&A processes, and drive better business decisions. Adaptive Planning makes it easy to move beyond cumbersome, spreadsheet-based processes, without the cost and complexity associated with traditional on-premise business intelligence (BI) and enterprise performance management (EPM) software.

Abacist Group is a certified implementation partner for Adaptive Planning software and was recognized as Adaptive Planning's Top Partner of 2010.

Event Details

Date: Thursday, March 24, 2011
Time: 8:30 am – 11:30 am (CST)
Location: Sheraton Austin as the Capitol
701 East 11th Street
Austin, Texas 78701
Cost: Free

         01.08.11

Bill Aiken of Abacist Group to present at Proformative’s Seminar “Is it time to add more advanced forecasting, reporting and analytics” to be held February 8, 2011  at the Dallas Marriott Suites Market Center

Abacist Group invites you to learn from experienced professionals with global entities insights in addressing the issues surrounding the right time to move to more advanced corporate performance management solutions, including cloud computing and SaaS based applications. The seminar will consist of brief educational sessions, a networking session, and an interactive panel discussion. Attendees at this event will learn about the latest in Cloud Computing and SaaS for finance, accounting and related functions: what they are, where they can be used, how companies are putting themselves in the cloud and more. Our presenters have the latest knowledge of these applications and how you can put them to work for you, as well as what pitfalls to avoid.

Event Details

Date: Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Time: 8:00 am – 10:00 am (CST)
Location: Dallas Marriott Suites Market Center
2493 North Stemmons Freeway
Dallas, Texas 75207
Cost: Free

         09.23.10

Abacist Group Wins Adaptive Planning’s Top Partner award at the Accelerate Conference in Chicago

Abacist Group is proud to announce that Adaptive Planning awarded Abacist Group their Top Partner of 2010 Award for providing outstanding service. Bill Aiken, Principal & CEO of Abacist Group, accepted the award from Bill Soward, President & CEO of Adaptive Planning, at Adaptive’s recent Accelerate user group conference in Chicago, Il on September 23. Abacist Group was recognized for its instrumental role in some of Adaptive Planning’s largest clients during the 2010 calendar year. Abacist Group helped clients select Adaptive Planning as their Corporate Performance Management solution and then implement their Planning, Forecasting & Budgeting models within Adaptive Planning.

Adaptive Planning is the leader in on-demand budgeting, forecasting, and reporting solutions. They make it easy for companies worldwide to improve financial agility, strengthen collaboration, and drive better-informed and more strategic business decisions. Best of all, unlike traditional enterprise software alternatives, Adaptive Planning’s innovative solution is affordable, deploys quickly, and does not require new hardware, software, or IT support. Powerful planning and reporting have never been easier.

Abacist Group is a management consulting firm focused on Corporate Performance Management. Abacist Group’s clients realize that a strong foundation in Corporate Performance Management (CPM), Planning & Analysis provides them with a competitive advantage. However, most companies lack the fully-realized triple-play of possessing the right tools, processes and people. Abacist Group helps clients rapidly gain CPM acuity through building and implementing CPM tools, optimizing Corporate Planning & Analysis business process, and ensuring that the client's human talent possesses the right skills & knowledge to execute their CPM vision. If a client lacks the capacity to realize their vision fully using internal talent, Abacist Group has deep CPM operating experience to help augment the client's efforts with Interim and Fractional Staff as well. Abacist Group is a certified value added reseller partner of Adaptive Planning and the winner of Adaptive Planning’s Top Partner of 2010 Award. 

09.13.10

          07.13.10

PROPHIX Software Grows its North American Partner Base with the Addition of Abacist Group

PROPHIX Software, a leading provider of Corporate Performance Management (CPM) today announced its partnership with Abacist Group.

“I am very pleased to announce our formal partnership with PROPHIX.” says Abacist Group Principal and CEO, Bill Aiken. “PROPHIX delivers a great value proposition for their clients with their rapid time-to-value. This time-to-value is especially important to Abacist Group as we always seek to over-deliver relative to our clients’ expectations.”

 

Abacist Group offers a dynamic suite of financial and transformational services to their clients that result in higher business performance and sustainable growth. Abacist helps clients rapidly gain CPM acuity through implementing CPM solutions like PROPHIX, optimizing corporate planning and analysis business processes, and ensuring that the client’s human talent possesses the right skills & knowledge to execute their CPM vision. If a client lacks the capacity to realize their vision fully using internal talent, Abacist Group has deep CPM operating experience to help augment the client’s efforts with interim and fractional staff.

 

“Abacist’s clients realize that a strong foundation in performance management, planning and analysis provides them with a competitive advantage. However, most companies lack the fully-realized triple-play of possessing the right tools, processes and people.” says Abacist Group Principal and CEO Bill Aiken. “Having served many clients in the Consumer Packaged Goods and Food and Beverage industries, we appreciate the powerful flexibility that PROPHIX allows with respect to defining the set of products, customers, geographies and time periods in the planning & forecasting model. While other CPM software solutions offer this level of flexibility, I know of no others that deliver it with such rapid ROI.”

 

Customers utilize PROPHIX to align strategic objectives with tactical plans, and for daily monitoring, as well as financial, and variance reporting. This unified PROPHIX solution fully integrates budgeting, reporting, planning, scenario management, dashboards, and in-depth analysis capabilities, providing a forward looking view of company performance to stakeholders across the organization in a single extensible platform. 

 

"Abacist is an extremely important addition to our growing partner base with their specialty focus on providing quality Corporate Performance Management solutions to their customers." says Cheryl Power, Director of Channel Partners at PROPHIX. “Their expertise and high level of customer support makes them an ideal partner.” 

 

About PROPHIX Software 

PROPHIX Software is a leader in delivering performance management solutions including budgeting, planning, forecasting, reporting, consolidation, personnel planning and other advanced financial functions. PROPHIX Software maintains an outstanding reputation with its customers by consistently delivering tangible value and exceptional ROI, with a lower total cost of ownership. For more information, visit http://www.prophix.com. 

 

About Abacist Group 

Abacist Group is a Dallas, Texas based management consulting firm and was founded in 2007. They help clients improve their business processes including: Strategic Planning, Annual Planning & Budgeting, Forecasting, Analysis and Reporting. They provide practical solutions for the variety of challenges encountered in business today. For more information, visit http://www.abacistgroup.com. 

06.15.10

Bill Aiken, CEO Abacist Group Quoted in tED Magazine  (excerpt from article) 

Business Strategy, Focus on financial flexibility-Adaptive financial planning increases the ability to react quickly to whatever the economy brings.  

 

Financial planning was easier when all we had to think about was price. Traditionally, a company would prepare an annual budget that would be the plan for the year. It took weeks or even months to complete -with different departments working separately on their part of it—and it was relatively constrictive. Usually constructed on a simple spreadsheet program, the goal of this type of financial model is to project conditions into the future, which will hopefully allow the company to plan activities that will improve its financial results. This traditional annual budget, however, offers only a snapshot of conditions and limits flexibility in making financial decisions. A newer approach to financial planning is to be more adaptive to current conditions and continuously examine underlying assumptions and refresh the financial model to reflect changing conditions.

 

"Adaptive financial planning isthe realization that a business environment is dynamic. To properly react, especially in a rocky economy, a distributor has to refresh its outlook more frequently and be more responsive to the marketplace” said Bill Aiken, principal and CEO of the management consulting firm Abacist Group.

 

The concept of scenario analysis, not unlike the concept of building information modeling used in designing construction projects, takes adaptive planning one step further. It goes beyond a single change in assumptions to examine a company’s true financial standing through identifying key financial drivers.

 

 To read entire article, download here

 

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06.01.10

Bill Aiken of Abacist Group to present at Seminar “What CFOs & Finance Executives need to know about Cloud Computing and SaaS” to be held June 24, 2010  at  Meredian Business Center, Houston 

Abacist Group invites you to attend this this seminar where experienced professionals with global entities will help you understand the critical elements of your company's need for a Cloud Computing program. Few things are as critical to corporate finance, accounting and related professionals as our systems. And those systems, from core accounting and budgeting platforms to back office infrastructure, ERP and CRM are moving online, into the "cloud", and into an entirely new business model called Software as a Service, or "SaaS". This represents the largest change in technology for our profession since the dawn of the internet.

Attendees at this event will learn about the latest in Cloud Computing and SaaS for finance, accounting and related functions: what they are, where they can be used, how companies are putting themselves in the cloud and more. Our presenters have the latest knowledge of these applications and how you can put them to work for you, as well as what pitfalls to look out for.

Bill Aiken, Principal and CEO of Abacist group, will be a featured speaker at this engagement where his topic will be Understanding the Dynamics of the Cloud: Current and Emerging Trends .   Abacist Group is an implementer of various SaaS-based Corporate Performance Management and Financial Planning & Analysis systems.

 

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 04.07.10

Abacist Group To Present At Adapive Planning Breakfast Seminars   

Abacist Group has been invited to speak at three Adaptive Planning Breakfast Seminars in April.  Bill Aiken, Principal and founder of Abacist Group, will share best practices for financial management solutions.  He'll be joined by current Adaptive Planning users who will share real-world perspectives on how their finance organization transformed their planning and reporting processes.

Bill will be presenting in the following cities:

 

• San Antonio - April 20, 2010 
• Dallas - April 22, 2010 
• Houston - April 28, 2010 

For more information and to sign up for this complimentary seminar, please click here.

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          11.04.09

Abacist Group Earns Adaptive Planning Partner Certification

Abacist Group was recently certified as a Value Added Reseller for Adaptive Planning, following a string of successful implementations and high client satisfaction. The official partnership will enable Abacist Group to expand our CPM Software Implementation and Management services to help you achieve high performance and sustainable growth.

Adaptive Planning is a leader in budgeting, forecasting, and reporting solutions. Their enterprise software provides an affordable alternative to traditional budgeting tools, while offering a high degree of functionality. 

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          06.30.2009

Abacist Group Opens New Office at Watters Creek in Allen, Tx

Today, Abacist Group relocated its headquarters offices to accomodate growth in demand for our services.

We are pleased to announce, effective July 1, 2009, our new headquarters in Watters Creek at Montgomery Farm in Allen, Texas.

Watters Creek is a unique location in North Dallas featuring world-class design alongside natural beauty.  The development has been certified by the U.S. Green Building Council for its environmentally-sound construction and finish-out, and is home to the first LEED certified retail development in the state of Texas.

 

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06.01.2009

Free Webinar: Leverage Planning, Forecasting & Analytics to Outperform the Competition during the Economic Storm

Top performing organizations leverage Planning, Forecasting and Analytics best practices as a competitive advantage. Now more than ever, a disciplined approach to Corporate Performance Management will enable your company to weather the economic storm and compete more effectively.

By attending this webcast, you'll learn:

 

• How the Oakland A’s leveraged planning & analytics to outperform the competition 
• Characteristics of top performing finance organizations 
• Practical financial tools and techniques to help you outperform 
• How to automate your revenue planning to see your business in a whole new way – by location or by SKU using 

Abacist Group helps companies enhance their Corporate Planning and Performance Management acuity. Prior to founding the Abacist Group, speaker Bill Aiken was responsible for managing a $7 Billion P&L for PepsiCo, where he worked in the Finance organization for a decade, helped gain market share against strong competitors like Coca-Cola, and grew the top-line while expanding profit margins.

Register today to gain valuable takeaways that will help you manage your business in uncertain economic times. 

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          04.30.2009

Dallas Executive Seminar: Secrets to Transforming Finance to be held May 19, 2009

Adaptive Planning & NetSuite will host a free breakfast seminar for finance executives on May 19, 2009 at the Westin Galleria in Dallas, TX.

Bill Aiken, Principal and CEO of Abacist group, will be a featured speaker at this engagement.

Attend this seminar and learn how your organization can deliver real-time financial control, comprehensive visibility, collaborative planning and forecasting, and rapid what-if analyses. Hear case studies that reveal how real-world finance teams have been able to transform their operations, enhance their role in corporate strategy, and navigate their company through rough waters—while simultaneously cutting IT costs.

This seminar will be hosted by NetSuite and Adaptive Planning—leaders in on-demand financial systems for companies of all sizes. They will be joined by Abacist Group, a business performance management consulting firm, who will outline best practices from experience with financial performance management implementations. You'll also learn first hand how the latest innovations in accounting, planning and reporting technologies are changing the game for growing companies like Shared Technologies.

During this free seminar, you'll learn:

 

• The secrets to leapfrogging both antiquated accounting systems and Excel-based planning and forecasting 
• Steps to slash budgeting time by 90% and enable timely "what-if" analyses 
• Tactics for getting instant business visibility 
• How achieving a single version of the truth is easier than you think 
• How Software as a Service will keep IT costs in check 
• Financial best practices for companies of all sizes 

Please email bill.aiken@abacistgroup.com for more information or if interested in attending.

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          03.23.2009

World Class Corporate Planning Performance Management

Bill Aiken, Principal and CEO of Abacist Group, will be presenting "World Class Corporate Planning and Performance Management" at a series of upcoming seminars hosted in Texas by Adaptive Planning.

Bill is scheduled to speak at the following seminars:

 

• Houston 3/24 
• Austin 4/23 
• Dallas 5/19 

Please join this complimentary executive breakfast seminar and learn best practices for improving the agility and accuracy of your financial planning, reporting, and what-if-analysis.  

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