Despite being locked in the midst of potential merger or acquisition discussions and the dust only just settling over a bitter proxy battle with one of its key investors, Geac Computer Ltd has decided to ignore its boardroom shenanigans and go ahead with a major launch of its MPC performance management system.
Geac officials say its MPC 7 is builds on a single application architecture and comes with major improvements in the areas of financial planning, consolidation and reporting.
A notable addition in MPC 7 is the inclusion of Excel-based interfaces to support collaborative planning and budgeting capabilities. Excel is by the far the most popular planning and budgeting tool used by financial departments today. However it is designed primarily as a personal productivity tool.
Geac has engineered a collaborative capability around Excel that allows multiple MPC 7 users to surface the core functionality of MPC’s planning capabilities directly from familiar Excel templating and formatting interfaces. Users can also tie these plans directly back to Geac’s financial consolidation application module as well. What Geac has basically done here is to extend the current Excel Services functionality to provide cell-based financial consolidation reporting.
Officials say the MPC 7 release also provides smarter consolidation capabilities including range-based and partial calculations, which promise to up consolidation process time by 30%.
Additionally, Geac has also simplified integration with general ledgers and back-end business systems like ERP and CRM with its Web-based MPC OpenLink mapping tool. The company is also offering several integration fast-track packages with its own ERP offerings.
The Markham, Ontario-based software maker’s timing and date (last Friday) of the launch is curious and is perhaps overshadowed by current M&A discussions. A proxy battle with Crescendo Investments – promoted by fears that Geac will sell itself out too cheaply or spend too much on further acquisitions – was dropped last week.
