Board
What is Board?
Flexible, fully web-based platform with tightly integrated system architecture of proprietary multidimensional in-memory database and front ends. Graphical no-code development environment for business power users to create tailored planning and performance management applications.
- Board functions (BARC classification)
● = Function covered, ●● = Functional focus
● = Function covered
●● = Functional focus
● = Function covered, ●● = Functional focus
● = Function covered
●● = Functional focus
About Board
The information in this section has been provided by the vendor of Board.
Self-description of the vendor
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Board BARC Review & Rating
This section contains our independent analyst views on Board.
Provider and product description
Board was founded in 1994 and employs more than 600 people. Both its European head office and software development headquarters are located in Chiasso, Switzerland. The company also has regional headquarters in London, UK, and Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Board has worldwide offices and a global partner network. More than 2,000 customers around the world use Board to implement planning, performance management and analytics projects. The ownership of the company changed in 2019, when Nordic Capital acquired a majority share to support the vendor’s continued international expansion.
Board aims to provide a modern and intelligent planning platform that supports fast, automated and transparent decision-making. The scalable platform helps enterprises discover insights that drive business decisions and unify strategy, finance and operations through connected and agile planning to achieve control of performance. Therefore, Board unifies platform capabilities (integration, security, etc.), planning and automation functionality, AI/ML, and analytics, reporting and collaboration features in an easy-to-use, no-code solution for business power users to build tailored applications. Board does not focus on specific industries, but popular sectors across its customer base include retail, banking and finance, manufacturing, professional services and consumer packaged goods.
Board offers a combined product consisting of a front end and a proprietary, multidimensional, in-memory data processing technology, which also allows for business-user-friendly data modeling. The product provides a consistent, technically homogeneous environment for administration, development and utilization with tightly integrated front and back ends. The product is data agnostic and supports data integration via ODBC/ODBO/REST and API connectivity including predefined connectors to various cloud and on-premises data sources. It is available in the cloud (leveraging Microsoft Azure) and, if required, on premises.
At its core, Board is a flexible web-based platform for creating custom planning and performance management applications. The product offers intelligent planning capabilities but also reporting, dashboarding, analysis, advanced and predictive analytics, and financial consolidation functionality. It comes equipped with a rich portfolio of visual objects, from basic charts to advanced charting techniques. Board offers strong and comprehensive functionality, especially for planning, forecasting and simulation use cases. Users can create and tailor a broad range of applications specifically to their own needs, bringing together financial and operational data. Together with its partners, Board now has a strong focus on enhancing the platform with prebuilt business content, including connectivity to data sources, preconfigured models, embedded industry best practices, workflows, reports and dashboards. Applications such as Group Consolidation and Reporting, Integrated Business Planning, HR Management and Sales Performance Management are available from Board itself. Additionally, Board and its partners offer solutions for specific domains and industries. These can be adapted to customers’ individual needs.
AI- and ML-augmented planning and decision support is an important area of investment for Board’s future development. Flexible capabilities focus on automated predictions, intelligent insights and conversational experiences / generative AI – provided by Board’s own functionality, through the integration of R and via third-party ML services such as Microsoft Azure ML.
Strengths and challenges of Board
BARC’s viewpoint on the product’s strengths and challenges.
Strengths
- Flexible, fully web-based planning and performance management platform with tightly integrated system architecture of proprietary multidimensional in-memory database and front ends.
- Graphical no-code development environment for business power users to create tailored planning and performance management applications.
- Comprehensive planning, budgeting and forecasting functionality for all kinds of planning approaches (top-down, bottom-up or combinations of both). Customers can address various workflow-based planning topics on one common platform with different aggregation levels (e.g., strategic, financial and operational planning) for an integrated business planning approach.
- Complementary, comprehensive capabilities for BI and analytics including dashboards, reporting and analysis with a rich portfolio of visual objects. AI-and ML-augmented planning and decision support based on the platform’s own capabilities, native R integration and third-party ML services integration to execute AI/ML algorithms.
Challenges
- Limited direct access to the proprietary Board data model for third-party front ends. However, Board continues to open the platform via APIs. As an example, for those customers following a Microsoft strategy, Board data sets can be imported and consumed in Microsoft Power BI by leveraging a REST API. Moreover, Board also natively includes its own comprehensive BI and analytics capabilities.
- Board has a comparably low level of prefabrication, and many implementations are customized based on customer requirements, which is a real strength of the product. However, the survey results indicate that the product’s extra flexibility may lead to implementation projects taking longer to complete in comparison to those of competitors. Therefore, Board’s future strategy strongly focuses on “solutionizing” the flexible platform. Several prebuilt but adaptable applications are now available from Board and its partners to provide industry best practices and to speed up implementation projects.
- Board is a very flexible and comprehensive platform. Depending on the data complexity and volume, the product's flexibility and rich functionality can lead to quite complex handling for inexperienced users when implementing and building intricate applications for customized solutions.
- According to survey feedback, some customers consider the product to be more expensive than competing offerings following a significant price increase in recent years. However, Board also includes BI and analytics capabilities, and the platform is often being extended to include solutions for new business problems.
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Board User Reviews & Experiences
The information contained in this section is based on user feedback and actual experience with Board.
The information and figures are largely drawn from BARC’s The BI & Analytics Survey, The Planning Survey, The Financial Consolidation Survey and The Data Management Survey. You can find out more about these surveys by clicking on the relevant links.
Why users buy Board and what problems they have using it
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Full user reviews and KPI results for Board
All key figures for Board at a glance.
- Get independent information on software solutions, market developments and trends in data, analytics, business intelligence, data science and corporate performance management.
- Make data & analytics decisions based on numbers, data, facts and expert knowledge
- Access to all premium articles and all our research, including all software comparison studies, scores and surveys.
- Unlimited access to the BARC media library
- Consume unlimited content anywhere
Individual user reviews for Board
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
Easy to use and modify without any programming skills.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
The flexibility in creating and modifying graphs and the report formatting.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
To spend the right time in defining the requirements of the project together with the Board business partner.
How would you sum up your experience?
It's good.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
Support ist gut erreichbar & hat auch immer eine Lösung für ein Problem.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
Bugs, die nicht nachvollziehbar sind & auch externe Dienstleister zum Verzweifeln bringen. Mehr Möglichkeiten / Funktionen auch wieder für OnPremise-Kunden zur Verfügung stellen.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Board sollte unbedingt mit einem vorgelagerten DWH betrieben werden, auf welches Board dann zugreift.
How would you sum up your experience?
Sehr gemischt. Das System funktioniert so manches Mal einwandfrei (vor allem seit den letzten Updates 12.x). Allerdings gibt es immer wieder mal kleine Bugs, die in langem Austausch mit dem Board-Support geklärt werden können.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
Hohe Flexibilität. Integration von Reporting und Planung - und eventuell perspektivisch Konsolidierung.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
Dynamische Spaltenüberschriften - z. B. das jeweiligen Planungsjahr. Bessere Kommentierungsfunktionen. Automatische Aufsummierung von Werten, wenn man in Berichten Zellen markiert (wie bei Excel - auch z. B. mit Mittelwertfunktion).
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Ausreichend Zeit und Ressourcen in der Implementierungsphase bereitstellen.
How would you sum up your experience?
Überwiegend gut. Alle Kernanforderungen konnten bis jetzt umgesetzt werden. Allerdings ist das zugrundeliegende Datenmodell sehr komplex. Berechnungen und Selektionen können mitunter etwas länger dauern.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
Planungsfunktionalitäten, einfache Administration, begleitend Workflow und stark in Analyse & Reporting, An-/Einbindung anderer Systeme z.B. Karten.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
Spezifische Anpassungen gehen nur über Community, wenn nicht genügend Likes dann keine Umsetzung.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Zeit für Vorarbeit und Pflichtenheft einplanen, User Experience sehr wichtig, Anwender und Fachbereiche mitnehmen, Schulung mit einplanen, Historisierung als Thema ernst nehmen.
How would you sum up your experience?
Wir sind noch in der Umsetzung.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
The ease with which the knowledge and skills needed to administer the software can be learned without any specific background.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
Data visualization for dashboards and integration with IBCS standards.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
If you are retail industries, I highly recommend the use of Board to move efficiently through the ongoing and growing complexity of daily operations.
How would you sum up your experience?
Positive or very positive on all fronts, more than 70 percent of my work time is based on using Board.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
Flexibilität, Funktionen.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
Beschränkte Funktionen, Limitierungen bei Darstellung, Grafiken/Diagrammen.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Sorgfältige Auswahl der Implementierungspartner / Berater, gute Ausbildung der Projektmitarbeiter.
How would you sum up your experience?
Einführung gelungen, aber nicht reibungslos.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
Integration Benutzeroberfläche und technischer Datenbankunterbau. Weboberfläche. Geschwindigkeit.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
Schlüsselfertige KI-Integration mit der Azure Cloud.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Interessierte, fähige Mitarbeiter finden und zum Developer ausbilden / befähigen-
How would you sum up your experience?
Gerne weiter so.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
Flexibilität, Konfigurierbarkeit.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
Kein undo button.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Prozessklarheit für den geplanten Einsatz. Keine Standardsoftware = Vor und Nachteil.
How would you sum up your experience?
Wichtig war der Implementierer Celver!!!
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
Flexibilität, schnelle Anpassungsfähigkeit, userfriendly.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
Performance.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Viel Zeit in die Konzepte investieren, da Board sehr flexibel ist.
How would you sum up your experience?
Richtige Software für unbestimmte Zeiten.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
Von allen Systemen, die ich in 20 Jahren kennengelernt habe, bei weitem das Beste.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
Es ist kaum möglich, Mitarbeiter mit Board-Wissen zu finden, auch Dienstleister sind Mangelware und sehr teuer.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Ausreichend interne Ressourcen und Mitarbeiter einzuplanen, das Tool ist mächtig, aber muss beherrscht werden.
How would you sum up your experience?
Im Großen und Ganzen sehr positiv und zufriedenstellend.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
The fact that, thanks to its high flexibility and relatively low complexity, it can be used to create almost any kind of CPM application, allowing companies to potentially use the software in any department to satisfy any need. Tools developed in Board are able to meet very specific requirements and therefore can really help organizations to better support their daily business and to improve their strategic and operative processes. If properly carried out, a Board project will certainly provide a true added value.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
The price increase of Board licenses in the last years is in part justified by all the recent improvements, but at the same time it could still be perceived as an obstacle for a company wanting to launch new CPM projects.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Board is really flexible and allows companies to set up CPM tools following a custom made approach. For this reason, it is more than important to have a very clear idea of the desired target of any Board project. Processes must be well defined before actually starting to move them in Board, and therefore companies must invest all the needed time in the analysis phase. The role of external consultants and of internal resources is strategic and makes a real difference.
How would you sum up your experience?
Board is a very good tool that has improved a lot in the last years in all aspects, reaching a top-class level in its market. This was made possible thanks to a wise product strategy that aimed to solve all the long-time issues as well as to introduce new features both for developers and end users.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
Réactivité des équipes de l'éditeur, ils proposent des événements clients assez régulièrement et font progresser les utilisateurs grâce à des formations très intéressantes. Outil facile à prendre en main (que ce soit pour un admin ou pour un user) et qui permet de faire tout ce qu'on souhaite y faire. Interface esthétique.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
Avoir un peu plus d'éléments de personnalisation pour rendre le visuel de nos écrans métiers plus agréables à utiliser. Amélioration des interfaces admin afin de mettre plus de commentaires
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Bien préparer les données en amont, quel que soit le logiciel choisi. Si les données est propre à l'arrivée, le rendu final sera excellent. Bien préparer son cahier des charges. Idéalement, avoir une ressource interne capable de développer ses propres outils afin de ne pas être dépendant à 100% d'un prestataire. Trouver un bon intégrateur qui va réussir à former les équipes.
How would you sum up your experience?
Très satisfait !
