At a time when finance departments are seeking to accelerate their analyses while ensuring data reliability, Planful is strengthening its integration capabilities with Microsoft Power BI. This development enables companies to connect their financial planning and performance data directly to Power BI dashboards, without relying on manual exports or complex development work.
A direct connection between financial planning and Business Intelligence
Finance teams use Planful to prepare their budgets, forecasts, financial close processes and consolidations. Microsoft Power BI, meanwhile, is widely adopted by companies to create interactive dashboards and share performance indicators with different business functions.
With this native connector, governed financial data in Planful can now be integrated directly into Power BI. Dashboards therefore benefit from automatic updates, limiting the risks associated with manual handling, multiple file versions and reporting production delays.
More streamlined reporting for Finance teams
The integration is primarily designed to reduce repetitive reporting tasks. Finance leaders can create dashboards to monitor budgets, compare actual results with forecasts, analyse variances and track performance by department, cost centre, region or product line.
This automation also enables business leaders to access the financial information relevant to them more easily, without systematically depending on Finance teams for up-to-date data.
A consolidated view of company performance
One of the main benefits of this integration is the ability to combine data from Planful with other sources available in Power BI, such as sales, HR or operational data. Executives therefore gain a unified view of company performance within a single decision-making environment.
According to Planful, this approach helps improve the quality of analyses and accelerate decision-making through constantly updated indicators.
Insights from Igloo Products
Planful illustrates this integration with the testimonial of Igloo Products Corp., which modernised its budgeting process by replacing hundreds of spreadsheets with a centralised platform.
The company explains that more than forty employees from Finance, Human Resources and Operations now use a single source of financial data. The addition of the Power BI connector then facilitates the sharing of this information with all stakeholders, while reducing the time spent preparing reports.
According to Igloo's Finance team, this transformation has freed up more time to analyse performance rather than produce the data.
source: Planful
