Whether you consider 50 capital projects a year, 500 or 5,000, there are myriad factors to evaluate in determining which deserve to be budgeted, and why. You want to consider projects individually and holistically to ensure the right balance of sustaining competitiveness while best positioning the company for growth. And looking ahead, you want to ensure that essential data for every project “travels” with it through the budgeting, approval, forecasting and reporting cycles.

Capital planning software automates and streamlines critical Capex processes, and enables finance leaders to assess and consistently compare each project’s strategic value, ROI and other investment criteria to make informed decisions. It’s why an enterprise capital planning solution like Finario is such an important component of the modern finance tech stack.

EPM, with its focus on departmental budgeting, treats capital projects as merely a line item. Total project cost, or total cost by month and associated depreciation. While, yes, there is some simple workflow, it’s rarely enough for the typical complexity of a Capex approval process in a large enterprise.

Finario is built around projects (called “investments” within the application). A large investment can contain dozens of costs, each with their own month-by-month cash flow along with a written rationale, ROI model, file storage and other capabilities enabling analysis and management of the project. The template is flexible to allow as much information as necessary on large or strategic investments, or the bare minimum for small routine expenditures. And each investment’s cost detail is automatically consolidated into a multitude of budgeting and forecasting reports by entity and fiscal year – giving FP&A professionals exactly the information they need.

Finario also tracks each investment’s progress as a project against its budgeting and approved project goals, which may span multiple fiscal periods. This data is automatically rolled up into a bevy of reports and tools that give operations and procurement executives the information they need to manage projects ingelligently and optimize the overall project portfolio.

So, while an EPM and an “EPM for Capex”  such as Finario offer budgeting and forecasting functionality, the focus and depth of information is very different. Which is why any business with meaningful Capex will need an Capex-centric solution in addition to an EPM.

Finario’s cloud-native Capex software solution can be accessed from any connected device, allowing all teams, from Finance and Accounting, to IT, Operations and Engineering, to access the system. This not only makes implementation easier, particularly across a distributed enterprise, it ensures greater compliance and governance. Data can be accessed simultaneously by any number of people (which can’t be done with a spreadsheet or SharePoint system).

Moreover, with essential data stored securely in the cloud, the risk of spreadsheets and other manually-created documents falling into the wrong hands is greatly diminished. Performance is continuously optimized and ensured. Lastly, from an IT perspective, a cloud-based solution such as Finario reduces hardware acquisition and maintenance costs.

Historically, many organizations have turned to custom applications to manage their workflow, often created using a generic platform such as Lotus Notes or Microsoft SharePoint as the base. For many, the process of creating this system is long, fraught with challenges and quite difficult to revise as needs change. They are difficult to use, and processes operate in “silos.” Moreover, they continue to rely on spreadsheets, which have a high probability of containing errors.

Finario is purpose-built for Capex and can be implemented quickly, without any custom code. Project-level data is updated dynamically, and its sophisticated analytics engine offers real-time reporting from start to finish across the capital investment life cycle. Other benefits include: Fast and easy conversion of costs from local currencies to a base currency; access on mobile devices; advanced security; and, continuous updates.

With a host of other features and capabilities, it’s easy to see how Finario is far more than a workflow tool.