Closedloop Solutions Releases TopLine Manager

Closedloop Solutions Inc announced the release of Closedloop TopLine Manager, a Web-based application that assists fast-track companies to improve lead times with a more immediate, dynamic look-ahead at bookings and revenue forecasts. This enables senior managers to immediately sense changes in the marketplace, interpret those changes against financial performance objectives, and respond and realign more rapidly.

Closedloop TopLine Manager enables a continuous forward visibility of the business environment that assists companies to improve their financial predictability, performance and response-time to market changes. This real-time visibility supports proactive steps to capture business opportunities and deal with business challenges by quickly implementing coordinated action while there's time to respond effectively.

"One of the great sources of fog in the financial road ahead is the fact that you don't get clear information about the sales pipeline until it's too late to do anything about it. This is a major source of surprise in high-velocity markets that often hurts the growth prospects of fast-moving companies," said Dr. Katherine Jones, Managing Director of Enterprise Applications for the Aberdeen Group. "Topline Manager effectively accelerates information from the front lines to improve visibility to dynamic changes in the marketplace."

The Challenge for Business Managers

In many businesses, top-line volatility is a key determinant of bottom-line volatility. Most expenses can be predicted within a range, but actual customer orders can vary dramatically from static sales forecasts. Developing an accurate, real-time perspective on future bookings and revenue is critical for effective financial performance management.

Closedloop TopLine Manager solves this challenge by enabling enterprises to collect forecasts in real time from sales, marketing, finance and manufacturing organizations. These forecasts may be combined to forge a consensus on bookings and forecast revenue. Flexible configuration options within Closedloop TopLine Manager allow forecast environments to be tailored for each organization. Users forecast only relevant data elements that match their intuition about the business, resulting in higher quality forecasts.

"Existing financial applications used by CFOs and other financial operations personnel leave companies vulnerable to volatility and unforeseen changes that can drastically affect financial performance," said Chandran Sankaran, CEO of Closedloop Solutions. "Closedloop TopLine Manager is the first financial application that gives real-time, clearer forward-visibility to companies in fast-moving industries so that they can dramatically improve the coordination of financial plans and overall business performance."

Silicon Graphics is one of the first companies to take advantage of Closedloop Topline Manager to more quickly and efficiently move information from the front line to improve predictability and enhance participation and ownership of the planning process.

"All too often, financial plans are revised without considering the knowledge and intuition that front-line managers have about the business," said Jeff Osorio, vice president, Financial Planning and Analysis for SGI. "In order for a financial plan to be accurate and be realistic, it must incorporate the most up-to-date information about business change. Closedloop's Topline Manager will allow us to include better information from more sources and make better decisions about our business."

The Closedloop Topline Manager Web-hosted application includes:

• Forecast Rollup -- allows companies to define hierarchies for products and customers and to use those hierarchies to roll up bookings and revenue forecasts from the sales, marketing, finance and manufacturing organizations.
• Forecast Input -- tailors the forecasting inputs by industry. For example, high-tech manufacturing companies may want to forecast unit volumes and prices for products while software or service companies may want to forecast only deal sizes.
• Consensus Builder -- allows companies to compare bookings and revenue forecasts in order to construct a consensus top-line plan for use in financial planning processes. Convenient, Maintenance-Free Hosted Solution

Closedloop offers TopLine Manager as a complete hosted application service. All upgrades are included in the service agreement, which assures that users always have access to the latest capabilities without cumbersome upgrade and migration worries. Closedloop is responsible for all the hardware and software elements needed to deliver the application and uses a rapid installation methodology designed to reduce implementation time down to a few short weeks. Closedloop TopLine Manager is a flexible application with a web-based administration capability that allows business users, not IT professionals, to manage configuration changes.

Availability

Topline Manager will be available for general release in January 2001.

About Closedloop Solutions Inc

Closedloop Solutions Inc provides Internet-age financial planning solutions for senior managers in fast-moving companies in high-velocity industries. Closedloop has delivered the first Dynamic Financial Coordination solutions that enable real-time, end-to-end financial plans that can be instantly updated as conditions change. Closedloop's suite of Web-native applications includes Topline Manager, SpendCap and BizPlan which give executives a continuous view of the financial environment by integrating feedback from front-line sales people and managers who are most acutely aware of changing business conditions and marketplace events. This creates superior forward visibility of market opportunities and enables a rapid realignment of resources to optimize an enterprise's overall performance. Privately funded by Sutter Hill Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and other prominent Silicon Valley leaders, Closedloop Solutions is headquartered in Redwood City, Calif., 30 miles south of San Francisco.

Contact Mansfield, Barnhart & Battison Public Relations, Victoria Battison, 760-436-0551, vbattison@mbipr.com.