Datarails

DataRails Review by Craig Morrow

Comentarios: My experience with DataRails has been first class. I have assisted with a seamless integration for Budgeting purposes and have now rolled out the solution for month end reporting. In both scenario's I have been able to reduce the time required for completion by around 40%. I particularly like the approach of having the Customer Success Manager driving the implementation and having the single point of contact through the customer journey.

Puntos a favor:

The ease in which the product was to learn and become and expert in. The functionality within the solution is exactly what any FP&A professional should be looking for in a solution. The implementation was extremely efficient as you start to build out real life business processes from the outset which mean you get a return on investment from day 1.

Contras:

When deciding to partner with DataRails I was fully aware that they are at the beginning of solution development journey. However, DataRails are always keen to receive feedback on possible suggestions for improvement and are continuously developing and releasing improved functionality.

Fantastic and Flexible Reporting Software

Comentarios: Our setup and integration was extremely easy and fast. I was the dedicated builder and PM for the implementation for a 200+ store retails company and we were able to sync, validate and build out of data in just under 7 weeks. We've only had a few system hiccups along the way that Datarails has fixed or addressed with reasonably speed. We've been very happy with the decision to work with Datarails and foresee that that feeling will remain for a long time to come.

Puntos a favor:

Datarails' direct integration with Excel has allowed our team to pick up using the system very quickly. It gives us the flexibility of Excel without having to worry about massive data tables or SQL pulls to get the data to represent in a proper manner. Datarails is constantly improving and they continue to work with their customers to advance their software and address needs. The sky is the limit for cuts of data that Datarails can provide, and with nearly constant improvement over our now two years of use, our satisfaction with the software grows with each passing month.

Contras:

It's strength with Excel is also it's weakness. Reports are only as good as the logic that is layered into Excel, so it necessitates numerous data checks to ensure that our numbers are accurate. Fortunately, Datarails makes those overall checks simple. I really want to love the Dashboards and Storybook functions, but the overall functionality of their graphing does need some improvement. Their dashboard have a really amazing variance analysis tool, but it needs updating and resources to be fully fleshed out and used as intended.

VIN Product Assessment

Comentarios: The customer support and response is excellent

Puntos a favor:

Easy to navigate and set-up the dashboards

Contras:

It doesn't work well with Quickbook Desktop. It requires a lot of manual processes. It does not automatically integrate with the QB desktop version. It's too cumbersome.

A Great Tool

Comentarios: Datarails has been an absolute gem compared to the first FP&A software we had tried to implement. Once we integrated our raw data into the tool, conducting analysis, reconciling our FS, and generating executive dashboards have actually worked.

Puntos a favor:

Ease of use, scalability and dashboards are user friendly.

Contras:

Integration to our ERP system was more difficult than expected due to not having the expertise of both Workato and our system.

Datarails has become an integral part of our management reporting framework

Comentarios: The Datarails product and support team have been very good to work with. The product has automated several very manual processes that save us time and deliver actionable information more quickly.

Puntos a favor:

Seamless integration with key business applications; strong reporting and dashboarding capabilities; integrates well with Excel to allow for next-level data manipulation and analysis.

Contras:

Early in the implementation we discovered a limitation on the volume of data we could effectively pull into and analyze with Datarails. The implementation team helped us reconfigure some workflows, limit the data we needed to expose to Datarails, and we got to a good, workable solution.

Datarails Review

Comentarios: Datarails is a good system, so far we've been using it for a couple of months and haven't had any issues

Puntos a favor:

The ability to: - drill down on transactions within excel - the ability to create board decks with dashboards and storyboards

Contras:

- at times the systems dont seem too advanced when it comes to complex issues

Experience with DataRails

Comentarios: The overall experience with DataRails has been positive, but the company seems more interested with automating as much as possible rather than in teaching and empowering customers to become super users of the software.

Puntos a favor:

Once set up, DataRails is an effective tool to manage our regular as well as ad hoc financial reporting. It has saved time in constructing standard reports, thus freeing up time for deeper analysis.

Contras:

The process of setting up the environment can be tedious and confusing. Troubleshooting errors can be time consuming, particularly if your inputs are larger files (Any change to the Data Mapper needs to process to all files within a File Box) or if you have multiple inputs with different mappers (When input files are not uniform in structure, attempting to construct uniform mappers across inputs can be maddening). There is no readily available resource that can thoroughly or effectively explain the flow of data or how to construct a Data Mapper to specific needs.

New FP&A user at a public company

Comentarios: I really like it, I would recommend it to a friend in and instance if they work in FP&A.

Puntos a favor:

The ability to immediately see real time KPis update automatically from integrations from CRM and Sage Intacct is incredibly valuable and saves a lot of time.

Contras:

The set up and learning process is lengthy and quite complicated. I don't know how to solve it but just know it takes time.

Great Resource

Comentarios: It has been very good. The product works as intended and the support team is strong.

Puntos a favor:

It is a great tool for consolidating various complex datasets and compiling into a simple dashboard / reporting tool.

Contras:

Some of the excel add-in functionality does not always appear to work. Excel formulas often do not work at first or require small tweaks to streamline.

Growing Together

Puntos a favor:

DataRails is amazing at increasing the speed of analysis. It has helped us gain a very quick overview of our business and all the branches.

Contras:

As someone who needs to teach this to others, it is hard to teach to someone who does not have some background with technology. Even people with some background in excel have a tough time with all of the functionality offered.

CEO-friendly FP&A tool

Comentarios: The company's support and new feature rollout cadence is fantastic. They are very much innovating and doing all the right things. Very bullish on them!

Puntos a favor:

The dashboard and visualizations are the best part of Datarails. Our finance team can readily create the visualizations on our data that I can benefit the most from. Deltas and variances jump out at you, trendlines are clear, and the data reporting capabilities really are in a class by themselves.

Contras:

Like any FP&A tool, it starts out slow. Your team has to learn how to leverage the tool and work with data that is originating outside of financial systems. It's taken us well over a year to get to the point where we're getting results and answers faster through Datarails than by manually creating a one-off report in Excel. The work has been worth it though, and it's just one of those inevitable aspects of leveling up your reporting and forecasting capabilities: it's not going to happen overnight or without a lot of training and validation work.

Product that exceeds expectations

Comentarios: In one word - "unbelievable" - I expected the software would be good, but once the software was up and running it exceeded expectations. The product drove down the manual time consuming data collection from 4 business days to a couple of hours. This was essential during the pandemic as more frequent turns of the forecast was required and without this software we would not have managed. The company used the product for other use cases we did not envision when we made the initial purchase.

Puntos a favor:

Value for money, ease of use and accuracy. Because the program is excel based it did not take long for the team to master. Created an efficient process and removed the manual work from the department by automating the vast amounts of data in a matter of minutes. As the work load grew the product became more valuable to the company.

Contras:

One difficulty was when a Microsoft patch was released it caused some issues with a formula, but the support desk was able to help correct when we brought it to their attention.

Great forecasting/budgeting software

Comentarios: Great customer service, very quick to respond and very helpful walking me thru different ways to show my data that would be easiest to maintain.
Easy to use product that adapts to your company, rather than having to adapt to the product.

Puntos a favor:

This software was very easy to implement as we transitioned from a different software. what sold us on DataRails was the ability to continue to use our current reports. Dashboard views are also great, it gave us the ability to report on operations metrics , versus some software's that only focus on financial reporting. We also really liked the idea of having a dedicated customer rep , this has been extremely helpful thru the implementation, but also in creation of all our reports

Contras:

Would like to see more development in consolidation/conversion, as well as adding to dashboard reporting.

Easy to Implement and Superb Customer Service

Comentarios: We have had an excellent experience with the DataRails implementation Team. The person assigned to our account [SENSITIVE CONTENT] is very responsive to our questions and he has been able to trouble shoot all challenges that we have found during our configuration and implementation process. This Excellent Customer service is the primary reason why we stayed with DataRails.

Puntos a favor:

We found the software very easy to implement as we were able to quickly interface our current Excel Spreadsheets with DataRails.

Contras:

We are currently using DataRails primarily for Budgeting and we are using a significant number of spreadsheets/Budget Schedules to feed into the budget. The more sheets you add, the more DataRails slows down in order to update the budget when you revised one of these spreadsheets. If different people are updating various spreadsheets at the same time, it takes more time for DataRails to update all budget figures.

Best FP&A Software

Comentarios: Fantastic! It has streamlined my workdays allowing me to focus on analysis instead of creating new reports.

Puntos a favor:

Datarails has massively cut down on the time we spend assembling reports, updating our KPI's and financial reporting package is streamlined with the ability to refresh data in Excel, in addition version control is a thing of the past as we are easily able to keep track of what data we upload and when files were changed. The dashboards and widgets allow for quick and easy visualization of our data that we distribute across our locations for managers to use. Datarails continues to develop the software adding new features at a regular cadence.

Contras:

There is not much I have run into that I dislike about the software, in the beginning some of the formula writing in setting up custom columns was difficult but the release of Datarails University with all the tutorials solved many of the issues of needing a refresher on how to do certain things in the software.

Good, but training could be better

Puntos a favor:

The Excel implementation is great, but the ability to get efficient is labored.

Contras:

The inability to know what type of user you are and what access you have. You may be trying to accomplish a task and looking for an option that you may not even have access to. Also, the confusion of File Boxes and Data Mapping and integrations and configurations is all jumbled. More concise direction would be appreciated.

Best FPA Tool on the market

Comentarios: great. Ari was amazing in implementation

Puntos a favor:

flexibility with excel is key, i find it easy to use and scalable

Contras:

integtration with sage is not perfect, requiring workaround

Amazing system with amazing support

Comentarios: DataRails has allowed us to monitor the performance of our business in ways we simply could not before. We have also been able to simplify a number of our reporting processes. These two things have allowed us to share information with a wider pool of stakeholders within our company and monitor the performance of our business much more closely.

Puntos a favor:

DataRails provides us with version control, data transformation, and visualization tools that we did not have before. We have streamlined many of our reporting processes, and we also use DataRails to feed a number of Excel and PowerPoint-based reports. DataRails support is very responsive.

Contras:

Some features don't work as expected, and it can be hard to tell if it because of a bug or user error.

Great product

Comentarios: Really good, would recommend............

Puntos a favor:

Ease of implementation, cost effective, great support, new features added

Contras:

getting used to DR formulae as a typical Excel user. Would be great if i could copy paste excel formulae into DR and it could translate to DR formulae.

Datarails is certainly on "track" to becoming something huge

Comentarios: Overall positive for sure, I think its simple enough to learn and use. Very powerful for reporting.

Puntos a favor:

The visuals are very impressive. Its simple enough to use if you map correctly from the initial data source.

Contras:

There were a few options on the dashboarding side that did not allow me to do specifically what I wanted in terms of data comparisons and splitting the data on the same chart in the way I wanted.

Great Software for Reporting!

Comentarios: Working with [sensitive content hidden] throughout the implementation process has been great. Whoever gets him during the implementation will not be disappointed.

Puntos a favor:

Once you learn how to use the system, you won't look at reporting the same way. The reports take time to build out the first time, but can then be refreshed within seconds to have data available. No more creating pivot tables over and over.

Contras:

The system takes some time to get used to and understand the powerful features available. There are a lot of how to links to teach yourself how to use the system.

Review on first year use.

Puntos a favor:

Datarails is an exhaustive FP&A tool and great for Budgeting and variance analysis. The Report Builder is a powerful feature that helps to review results by Office, department & Cost centers. This is my first year using Datarails & it is the only FP&A software I have tried but I am very happy with it thus far. The implementation team & Customer Success Manager was very knowledgeable, smart, responsive & understood our business needs quickly to provide an ideal solutions for creating our first Budget in Datarails.

Contras:

The features are awesome but some of these are too complex to use without help from Datarails team member. Once the basic reports are created by Datrails team, it is then manageable to update filters and make format changes as needed. Building a report from scratch is difficult as the data mapper is too technical & hard to comprehend.

A great value

Comentarios: Great support! Liat is awesome.

Puntos a favor:

It's flexible and can do most anything I need it to do.

Contras:

Just the usual learning curve when using a new program.

CPM of choice

Comentarios: DataRails is used on a daily basis by my finance team as we perform analyses and drive insights. We chose to implement this cloud financial and analysis platform since we desperately needed a consolidation planning tool where we could continue using disparate spreadsheets and at the same time control our processes easier and better. DataRails gives us exactly this in addition to flexibility in reporting financial results.

Puntos a favor:

1-We started using their Insights feature instead of our BI. Really useful. 2-Made data collection easy and organized 3-Constant access to up-to-date numbers

Contras:

would be nice if it had the option of drag and drop for inputs

CPM tool of choice, excellent value

Comentarios: In my organization we use DataRails’ cloud financial and analysis platform for budgeting and forecasting all of our financial metrics. Each department continues to rely on Excel as usual for budgets, and then using DataRails Finance sees real-time updates and compares budgets with actuals. Useful for a variety of processes including workforce management, income statement analysis, forecasting, reporting, etc.

Puntos a favor:

Seamless integration with Excel User friendly interface Has streamlined our budgeting process

Contras:

Occasionally there are glitches in our templates