City of Vancouver Streamlines Budgeting with Business Performance Management Software from Host Analytics

St. Louis, MO (PRWEB) November 14, 2006 -- Host Analytics, the price, performance leader in Business Performance Management software, today announced that the City of Vancouver, Washington, is using HOST BUDGET, a budgeting, planning and reporting solution.

With a population of over 157,000, the City of Vancouver's employees must determine the best possible way to allocate their biennial budgets while streamlining the budgeting process. The City of Vancouver has implemented HOST BUDGET from Host Analytics which provides users with a single, online budgeting tool that is accessed via a web browser and includes look-alike Microsoft Excel interfaces for budget input & reporting. Using HOST BUDGET, the City of Vancouver's Budget Office created a "Top-Down" planning model with business rules that take into account the inflationary factors and other drivers, resulting in a 'baseline' for the upcoming biennium budget.

The baseline budget from the top-down plan was used to pre-populate the bottom-up budget, which was then reviewed & updated on-line by the employees from the City Departments such as Police, Fire, Public Works, Transportation, Telephone, Electrical and Water, and against the 'Funds' that they have access to.

"One of the benefits of using HOST BUDGET is that we've been able to add a level of transparency that we never had before," said Natasha Ramras, budget and planning manager for the City of Vancouver. "Each budget manager is able to access the single repository from a Web browser giving more people visibility into budgets versus actual."

With HOST BUDGET, the baseline budget is distributed to each department where finance personnel are empowered to view and build their budgets. Each department is enabled to accurately calculate personnel costs with inflationary increases for the year. Decision Packages enable the city to manage the cost of new services.

"With complex regulations around the governmental budgeting process that involves creation of baseline budget, complex staff budgets with salary steps & salary ranges, and the decision packages; the government municipalities are looking for tools to help them streamline the budgeting process and shorten the budget timelines," said Jim Eberlin, CEO of Host Analytics. "As a result, we are seeing a huge uptake in our on-demand Business Performance Management software solution for the Government vertical."

In addition the City Department's have been able to create 'decision packages' for new initiatives that may generate new revenues, involve new expenditures including requests for new positions and operating capital expenditures.

The City Manager and other decision makers have been able to instantly consolidate and review the updated baseline as well as the decision packages, as they are being submitted and make appropriate recommendations.

After this budget process is over, the City of Vancouver will complete the implementation of the Host Analytic's reporting module, as well as start the implementation of HOST SCORECARD and the Long Term Capital Planning module.

About Host Analytics
Host Analytics is the price - performance leader in Business Intelligence and Business Performance Management software that helps companies improve their Budgeting, Forecasting, Financial Consolidations, Dashboarding, Scorecarding, and Reporting and Analysis. Founded in 2000, Host Analytics delivers a complete suite of Business Performance Management software offered as an installed solution or on-demand. Host Analytics serves small, medium and large size businesses around the world. For additional information, visit www.hostanalytics.com or call (314) 588-2121.

# # #