We do all our finance dashboards and staff utilization reporting for the finance team, the directors, program managers, and portfolio item managers. We are customers of XL Cubed and I'm the head of finance systems.
Cost effective with great capability, performance, flexibility and visuals
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
The most valuable aspect of this solution is its ease of use. The solution has great capability, performance, flexibility, visuals, everything. We also have a very good relationship with the consultants and the solution is also very cost effective. We received very good feedback from our senior executive when we showcased the product to the deputy chief exec a couple of weeks ago.
What needs improvement?
In general, we're happy with the solution but we're always looking to see what else is out there. The thing we've struggled with is our partnership with Tagetik UK, the consultants, and the issue we had gaining access to consultants to develop the solution on our behalf. Thankfully we connected directly with XLCubed and now have a pretty close and good relationship with them so the earlier problem we had of actually getting resources to help us develop has now been solved.
One of the things that we've been asking for and would like as an additional feature is a sort of benchmarking functionality. The ability to be able to benchmark, directly against the company digital corporate numbers. That said, there seems to be improved functionality within the latest release that could help us develop that further.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using this solution for six years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's quite a stable solution although we sometimes encounter issues internally within our IT department with regard to the structure.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We were at about 70 users and we've just scaled it up to 350 and it's working quite well, performance is okay. All users access it via the web portal. So it's pretty straightforward and scalable.
How are customer service and technical support?
Technical support comes back to our partnership agreement. If we have issues related to Tagetik UK, it's generally difficult to get the required feedback or support, but now we've got the relationship directly with XLCubed, it's a lot easier. XLCubed can get involved with most things although sometimes we still have to go to Tagetik and it's a little more difficult, but the XLCubed guys now provide us with good support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We used Tagetik for a lot of our reporting but it didn't have much dashboarding, or drag and drop capability. We did a pilot with SAF and we've also done some work from a power BI perspective where we found it wasn't flexible enough for our purposes. From our perspective, XLCubed is a better solution because it's directly integrated with our system. It's the front-end to our finance reporting system, our budgeting and management information system. There's no additional integration required, it automatically integrates. We load all our general information, all our activities reporting, time sheets and resolve plans.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup should have been simple but it turned out to be complex because it was done through Tagetik UK consultants. Now that we have direct access to XLCubed consultants things are relatively easy, but when we actually used Tagetik UK it was very difficult because there was quite a big skills gap within Tagetik UK to try and get it settled for us. The project, including the analytics piece, took five months. That included full implementation of Tagetik forecasting and budget systems as well, which was the more complex element. Actual implementation of XLCubed would have been a month or two. There is no maintenance required, just upgrades of the patches, a bit of housekeeping in terms of cache files, things like that. It requires general operational administration, not particularly resource intensive. We have about 350 people using it on a daily basis for half of any month. We hope usage will increase.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We only pay 14,000 pound a year for the licenses so it's a fairly cheap product.
What other advice do I have?
I would suggest that rather than go through with a partner like Tagetik UK, go directly to the company themselves. They've got really good and professional consultants who are very up to speed with the products. They provide the response and the delivery is also very good, and our product is good value for money. Because we pay such a reasonable amount for the annual license, and the visuals and the graphics, and the fact that it facilitates 370 users, makes it a real value for money product.
I would rate this solution a 10 out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
