Video Transcription
Welcome, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us for C cube live, this special edition focused on manufacturing.
We're gonna get started in just a second. But before we do, I wanna go over a couple of quick housekeeping items. So the first is our live q and a. We have some time reserved at the end of this session for answering any questions you might have, but feel free to throw them in the chat throughout the session as they come up, and we'll keep track of them and make sure that we answer them at the end.
And then next is the recording and slides. Slides. So everything you see here today, including the slides, will be sent to you following the webinar. So feel free to take notes if you'd like, but you will receive a copy of both the recording and the slides following this session.
So without further ado, I'd like to introduce our speaker for today, Lee Van. He is a solutions consultant here at CUBE, and he is going to take you through the presentation today. So, Lee Van, I will hand it over to you.
Yeah. Thank you, Alyssa. It's a pleasure to meet everyone on the call here today. I'm Liban, solutions consultant. Been at CUBE for just under a year now. Really excited to show you guys the product and the way you can utilize it to leverage, for financial reporting, planning, and we're gonna really cater this to, a manufacturing demo. So we'll go through those examples as well.
Alright. So first, we're gonna start with a quick poll. What would you most like to improve about your manufacturing operations?
It's a lot of good options there.
I'll give you guys a second to just jot those down.
Alright. Perfect.
So we got supply chain forecasting and budgeting and reporting efficiencies.
So you guys are obviously in the right place.
Cube being an FP and A tool, we're really looking to help you guys out with forecasting, planning, being able to have assumptions weighed up against each other by scenario.
Overall, the ability to actualize your forecasts, streamline all your processes is going to be leveraged with a system like this, and we're gonna show you exactly how we're gonna be able to do that.
So let's introduce Qube. It's the first spreadsheet native FP and A platform. What do I mean by that?
Now most FP and A solutions in the past were web based. So, typically, we'd get people off of Excel into these more web based solutions.
But over time, you know, we found that most people I think the number is eighty percent of people end up going back to Excel for both reporting and planning.
So Qube is the first spreadsheet native FP and A platform where you get to stay on Excel. You know? Everybody knows and loves the platform, but you still get that robust FP and A engine where you're able to push and pull data directly on the spreadsheet.
So the old way versus the cube way. The old way that we're able the old way of retrieving data using a spreadsheet solution, is completely outdated. Right? Using large robust formulas, data dumps, hidden rows and columns, that's what a lot of players in the market are doing today.
But back in twenty eighteen, Excel opened its API up for bilateral integration.
And what that means is you have the ability to push and pull data directly on the spreadsheet with no type of code, no type of formulas, and that's essentially when Qube was founded.
And that is really the main differentiator between Qube and a lot of other solutions is the way that we're able to retrieve and push data back to a cloud storage unit.
So, essentially, how we do this is we connect directly to your source systems. And I say systems because Qube is going to be your new central source of truth. We're gonna be connecting to your GL system, whether that's a NetSuite, a Foundation, a Sage, for example, or QuickBooks. We're gonna directly connect to your ERP system. But if you guys house operational revenue data in a CRM or any other systems, we're gonna be connecting to those directly as well, and we're gonna be able to consolidate all of that data into one central source of cube or sense central source of truth, which is cube in the sense.
From there, think of cube as a giant pivot table. You have data coming from source a, another subset of data coming from source b, and another subset of data coming from source c. You choose where you want to see that data directly in Excel. And with one click of a button, are you able to now slice and dice that data by plant, by location, by department, by entity, by market, and so on and so forth?
So what we're gonna go over in this demo today is reporting and analytics. So first, I'm gonna go through, just the way we're able to automate your reports, and then we're gonna go through the back end. Right? How we're able to leverage Excel using that FP and A technology.
And then to wrap up the demo, we're gonna go through some planning. And, really, this is your time, everyone on the call here. So if you guys have any questions, feel free to just type them out, and we'll reserve some time at the end of the call to answer them.
Just before we jump right in, I do see a question as I'm gonna share my screen here.
Does Qube have the ability to connect to, cloud data warehouses, Amazon, Redshift, Snowflakes, Databricks? Absolutely. All of those above that you all of those cloud, data warehouses that you've, listed out there, we have connected, and we have customers connected to currently.
Alright. So let's start with this Excel spreadsheet here. It's blank.
And what I'm gonna first go over is how to open up Qube. So Qube is an extension here. When you click on it, it manifests itself in the manifests itself in the sidebar, and you're presented with three options.
And, really, at first, I'm gonna go through to my demo environment here. But you're presented with three options. You can select a range on an existing report or template.
You can create a new reporter template, or you can open a previously created reporter template.
So to start, we're gonna show you the different ways of creating a new report. When you click on new, you're gonna get prompted with the set of dimensions that you have set. So think of dimensions as the different ways you guys wanna slice and dice your data. In this case here, we wanna slice our we wanna slice and dice our data by account, department, scenario, time, product, market, and entity.
We tailor this to your needs. In my particular demo environment, we wanna slice and dice by these measures. If you guys wanted production plant as a dimension or location as a dimension or project manager as a dimension, for example.
We're gonna be able to create those dimensions to suit your reporting and planning needs. In my case, I wanna build a report where in the rows, I wanna see all of my accounts coming from my ERP system. So I'm gonna move accounts into my rows, and I wanna build a p and l that also tracks headcount detail coming from my HRIS, and it also tracks bookings details coming from Salesforce. What I'm able to do is just click on income statement here, And what it does is it selects all of the accounts that fall in my income statement, and I build out these hierarchies in the back end. Right?
Once I'm satisfied with that selection, I can drill into my HR metrics, which is coming from my HRIS system. And I have a bunch of different accounts here that I can choose from. But in this case, I just wanna take a look at my headcount detail.
And then I'm gonna drill into my Salesforce metrics, and I wanna look at bookings coming from Salesforce. So three different pinpoints of data coming from three different, systems are gonna be able to be shown in one report directly in Excel.
Once I'm satisfied with what I see in my rows, I'm gonna move time into my columns because I wanna see my months going across my columns.
And just gonna go ahead and select twenty twenty three. And, you know, if I didn't wanna see the quarterly breakdown, I can just deselect these guys here, and I just wanted to see the months. That's perfectly fine.
And I'm gonna move scenarios into my columns as well. And this is essentially where all of your actuals are stored, your budget scenarios, your forecast scenarios. There's an unlimited amount of these scenarios that you can have stored in a particular environment at a time. Right?
So I'm gonna select actuals because I wanna see actuals. And then for all of my other dimensions, I'm gonna have them set as filters. So for this particular report, if I wanted to toggle a specific department or a grouping of departments, I'm able to do that. Same with product market entity.
So first concept that we're gonna go over is the ability to fetch data. And what that means is I'm pulling data from the cloud. Right? So when I click that button, what happens here is we've given Qube a call out of everything that appears in the call columns here, so time and scenario, as well as all my accounts that appear in the row, in the rows.
Excuse me. What Qube is doing is it's looking at this intersection here. So for example, that one point eight six four million that we see there, what it's doing is it's looking at the data that's stored relationally on the cloud, and it's looking up January for the time, actuals for the scenario, and then it's looking at platform revenue, the GL account coming from my ERP system across all of my departments, all of my products, and all of my markets and entities. Right?
And that's where it's able to pull that one point eight six four million.
Now one thing you guys are gonna notice is there's absolutely no formulas here. I'm looking well, I'm clicking anywhere on this template here, and these numbers are stored in Excel. So what does that mean? What's the significance behind that?
That is really what separates Qube from a lot of other players in the market. There's no hidden rows. There's no hidden columns. We're just using a newer tech stack in regards to the way we pull and push data.
So I can technically just close out of the cube extension here, and this is now my report. I can save this. I can send it out to whoever I want. These numbers are stored.
Right?
I'm gonna reopen up the cube template, and I'm gonna show you guys another thing you can do with this data. You can highlight any of these cells here. For example, two point one nine nine million for my platform revenue in September.
What I have the option to do is I can drill down into any of these cells that appear on this report here. So when I click drill down, what happens is Qube opens up the transaction level database that makes up that number. Right? So that report was showing my platform revenue for September twenty twenty three, but it was showing it across all of my products, all of my markets, and all of my entities. With by me drilling down into that cell, what I get is I get three hundred and ninety six rows of transaction level detail that makes up that number. So if I highlight all of those rows there, you can see there's that two point one nine nine million.
But I don't only get what the transaction level details were across all of my dimensions.
I also get and you guys have the full ability of choosing what you wanna see here, but I get the transaction level details. So in my case, I wanna see the memo. I wanna see the transaction code, and I wanna see the transaction date. If you guys wanna see purchase orders, vendors, customer ID, booking date.
It doesn't matter. We don't limit you on how many of these transaction level items you can see when you drill down into any of the cells, both at a consolidated level or at the lowest level. Qubes is gonna because Qubes stores the data both relationally, and it has the transaction level database that sits on top of that.
Now what you're gonna notice on this report is I have my p and l completely built out with just a click with just a click of a button.
But I also have my headcount detail here in row forty seven coming from my HRIS system. And then from rows forty eight through fifty one, I have my bookings details coming from Salesforce.
Because Excel is that front facing tool that I'm using, I can now add rows, add columns where I see fit, and Qube has a bunch of time shortcuts I can use as well. Right? So let's say, for example, we didn't have any data for my last quarter. Right?
We didn't have actuals from October to December. So Qube doesn't have any data sitting in those intersections. What I can do is I can very easily just call out what I want to populate for the last three months here. So in this case, budget.
Qube honors the range of what I'm trying to pull. So when I fetch my data, now it's gonna show me my budget values for the remaining three months of the year. What I can also do is I can insert a column here between September and October. And if I really just wanted to see a quick snapshot of my year to date values for September, I can just call that out.
Again, Qube honors the range of what I'm trying to see, and I'm gonna go ahead and fetch my data. And then it presents my year to date values for my revenue. Right?
Really easy platform to use. If you guys are comfortable with Excel, this is the platform for you.
This is really just the building blocks of building a new report from scratch. What you can also do, and I'm gonna go ahead and add a range here, is you can technically just call out what you wanna see on a report, and it's gonna display that accordingly. Right? So what do I mean by that?
I can list out all of my markets here directly on Excel. So EMEA, central, west, east are my four markets. I can call out what I wanna see in the columns. So in this case, I wanna see revenue across all my markets.
Right? But I also wanna see what my revenue was for twenty twenty three across all of my markets, and I wanna see it actuals versus budget comparison. So I'm just gonna take out actuals and budget. What you can do with the select feature here is you can highlight the range of what you're trying to capture.
You can hit select.
Cube picks up what appears in the columns, what appears in the rows, and what has to appear as a filter.
And from there, you just go ahead and fetch your data, and now you get that breakdown of exactly what you're trying to see directly in Excel. And you can have an unlimited amount of ranges. Right? I can add another range. If I wanted to see just what my revenue breakdown was for the last three years, for example, I can just simply type out, twenty twenty three, twenty twenty two, twenty twenty one, and then I could type out all of my markets here.
And simply just call out what I'm trying to capture in this range. Q picks it up, and then fetch data, and it pulls those numbers accordingly. Right? Really neat, really easy to use, but that select feature really allows us to get you guys up and running quickly, especially if your templates and reports are on Excel because we can look at a report like this, a p and l that tracks actuals versus budget across time.
And when we fetch our data, we'll we'll select the range, and then we'll fetch the data. Qube will pick up all of the intersections that you're calling out. But what Qube does as well is it offers a level of validation where it checks your table that you're trying to pull data for for any unrecognized dimensions. Now when you click this validate button here, cubes are gonna let you know, hey.
On cell c sixteen, I wasn't able to pull the data for this particular account coming from your ERP system.
What I can do is well, first, I'm gonna notice, you know, for row sixteen, there's no data being pulled for my discount revenue.
That's because it's spelled disco. Someone must have mistyped it. What I can do is I can just hit edit here. I can search up what it should be. That should be discount.
Can type that in there. And when I hit update, it's gonna update directly on the template.
Again, cube honors that range. I refetch my data, and now I have the data for my discount revenue. So think about the existing reports and templates you guys might have in Excel right now, that you still want to use. Right?
You don't want to go through these long implementation cycles where you're rebuilding everything from scratch. You can just leverage what you have right now, have CubeSits as an overlay on top of your reports. And then from there, it's just, you know, hey. We closed the books in September.
Qube keeps that one to one relationship between all your systems. The data is refreshing every single day.
From there, you just fetch the data for September, the data updates. Right?
We just close the books for October.
You call that out. The data updates accordingly. Right? Really easy platform to use.
We're gonna jump into the visualization aspect as well because now what we have is we have a subset of data across a bunch of different scenarios. We have actual data. We have budgets, reforecast, forecasts sitting in a cloud environment across, you know, my ERP system, my HRIS system, Salesforce, or any other CRM, all consolidated into one place. What you can do from there is now you can start building dashboards. Right?
In this case here, I have, revenue, by product, and I'm looking at budgets versus actuals, revenue by month across my markets.
I have personnel expenses by department.
We completely tailor this to your needs. Right? Whatever type of dashboard you're, that you wanna create, leveraging data across all your systems, you're gonna be able to do that and show it in one place.
Here, I have my bookings coming from Salesforce in a dashboard where I have data coming from my ERP system, for example. Right? I can drill down into any of these, intersections as well for my dashboard. So for example, I'm looking at my enterprise product.
I'm looking at actuals versus budget for that particular product.
I'm gonna go ahead and click on X-ray here, and what it does is you drill down and take a closer look what makes up those values. Right? So you get a time trend. You can see what it was over the last week, how it compares to other products, as well as different categories, that specific product across your markets, for example, across your different departments. Right? So we have that in house dashboarding tool that you can make, the most of when you have all your data sitting in one central source of truth at this point.
Now I'm gonna go through the back end here of how we're even able to automate and give Cube the ability to even call out what we're trying to pull. Right? We do that by setting up our model in the back end. So I'm gonna click on the dimensions tab here.
And, again, all dimensions are is the different ways you're able to slice and dice the data. In my particular environment here, I wanna slice and dice by my various different accounts, departments, scenarios, time, entity, product, and markets. Right? If we're looking at a construction company, for example, it might have a different set of, dimensions.
Right? We might have accounts, department scenario times, but we might have our jobs. Right? And we might have our jobs rolling up into their respective locations.
You might have an alternate hierarchy in that dimension where we have a list of our active projects versus our closed projects. We might have our different project managers and the jobs they're assigned to. Right? These think of these like different reporting categories.
We're looking at a manufacturing cube. We might have plant as a dimension, right, where we have our different plants rolling into, their different locations.
We might have our different products. Right? Well, what are we manufacturing exactly?
So we really do tailor this to your needs ultimately here.
But we're gonna start with the account dimension, and this is that idea of your new central source of truth.
I have my income statement accounts, you know, grouped up how I wanna see them. So I have all of my different revenue accounts grouped up like this. I can hit this little gear icon here and enable enable dimension reordering. So I can just simple drag and drop here.
I wanna see, discount come first. No. I wanna see my software revenue come first, and I wanna group up these two GL accounts in software revenue. That rolls up into total revenue.
You get to dictate exactly how you wanna structure your p and l.
Balance sheet comes from your, ERP systems. Pretty straightforward here. And because I build it like this, in the structure that you see here, when I jump into a report, all I'm doing, if you guys remember on the ad hoc here, is I'm just clicking on income statement. Right? And it's gonna populate my p and l in the order that I presented in the back end.
Now I can also build a cash flow hierarchy using formulas because, you know, not everything is an input level account coming from a source system. For example, gross margin, for example. I want that to be a formula.
So all I'm doing is I'm creating a formula to calculate gross margin where it takes my sum of all my revenue accounts less the sum of my cost to go cost of goods sold accounts.
We have a wide array of formulas that you can use for things like KPIs and, different metrics that you guys wanna track. But, ultimately, we give you the ability to either, create these calculations in the back end of Qube. But because we are Excel facing, you know, for something like gross margin that's calculated, I can either do it in the back end or I can simply just insert a row. Remember, I can insert rows and columns as I see fit and, you know, have my gross margin calculated as revenue less COGS. Right?
Same thing here. But, essentially, really big idea that I want you guys to get out of, the formula function is you you can either do it using cubes formulas or you can do it in Excel. You get the best of both worlds.
Now just collapsing that there, we can jump into the sales metrics here. So these are coming from Salesforce.
So we're tracking bookings, customer counts, new logos, so on and so forth. And then we have our HR metrics coming from my HRIS system. So by employee, I get my comp details. I get my headcount details, bonus details, FTEs, all that good stuff.
And here's when it where it really gets fun, in my opinion, when we're starting to look at KPIs because now we have data coming from a bunch of different places, and we can create formulas that leverage the data between my ERP and my HRIS, for example. Right? I can track what my revenue is by FTE now because I have those two subsets of data being sliced and diced by the exact same measures. So I can track things like that. I can track bookings coming from Salesforce by FTE. Right?
Now jumping into the next dimension here is department. Pretty straightforward. You know, this general hierarchy comes from your, source systems, but we don't restrict you on being set to one hierarchy. Right?
We've introduced the concept of alternate hierarchies using this tags function here. And when I click on tags, I can take a look and see, the different ways I wanna group up accounts or group up departments. Right? So for example, if I have, my cost of goods sold, right, I have my five hundred thousand accounts grouped up.
I have three five hundred thousand accounts grouped up in something that I call COGS in my main report. Let's say that's useful for external reporting. But for internal reporting, I might wanna group up four accounts. I need maybe who knows?
I wanna group it up with my sales commission account. Right? What I'm able to do with tags is I'm able to create these alternate groupings and ultimate alternate roll ups, and there's no limit on how many of these you can create.
Next, we're gonna go through the scenario dimension. And, you know, at the end of the day, this is an FP and A tool, so we wanna be sure we have the ability to store our actuals, accurately.
We wanna have the ability to store all of our budgets and our forecast scenarios, the ability to reforecast on the fly, and that's all done in this scenario dimension. We have our actuals coming from our source systems. We have the ability to set right access to them and lock them off so that they carry that one to one relationship between the source system in this scenario. But what we're also able to do is load in our, let's say, like, our original plans, right, beginning of the year budgets.
I can block them off so I don't have the ability to override any of the data that exists in these scenarios. And what I'm also able to do is if I hit just if I just hit edit there, I can copy or duplicate this budget. Right? I can call it budget e three, for example.
And what this will allow me to do is now budget v three is my working budget. I can make changes to that budget. The starting basis is what I've originally planned.
And after this forecasting cycle, I can now compare what I changed in my original budget within budget b three to what I've originally planned in the beginning of the year and see if there's any variance between the two. And we're actually gonna go through an exercise, of doing exactly that in a little bit. But one of my favorite functions is in QP here is the ability to merge scenarios. Now with merging scenarios, what you're doing here is you're calling out what subset of data you wanna see in, in months.
Right? You're calling out the months that you wanna see, that subset of data. I'll show you exactly what I mean here. It makes it really easy to, actualize your forecast because what you can do is you can create a scenario.
Let's call it six by six forecast here. And I wanna populate actuals for the first six months, so I'm just gonna call that out there.
And I can add another source here and call out which budget scenario I want to populate for my remaining six months. So in this case, I can say, hey.
The final iteration of our budget, b three, that got approved by finance, we wanna, we wanna populate that for the remaining six months. So I call out, hey, from July through till December, I wanna populate that with budget v three. Right? Click save.
And in under a minute, are you able to actualize your forecast? There's no need for extracting your actuals from your ERP system, dumping them into Excel, and then running a bunch of vlookups or macros in order to update that column. In under a minute, all your data is aggregated into one sort central source of truth now. You can easily create these reforecasts on the fly.
One thing right now that's also in beta is our predictive forecasting tool called Smart Forecast. Couple of our clients are actually leveraging this right now. And what this is used for is, it it it uses AI to predict out what your accounts will be using historical data. Right?
So I can create, like, a revenue smart forecast scenario.
And what I do is I call out the account or accounts that I want, this AI to use. So in this case, I just wanna take a look at revenue, and I want to extend revenue for the next twelve periods using actuals for the last two years, for example.
So this is a really good tool if you're using it to compare what we forecasted out for the next twelve months and compare that to what an AI would forecast your revenue to be using historical actuals. Right? You can choose the scenario in which the AI bases its predictions off of as well because we have actuals. We have forecasts. We have budgets stored in the system. So it it it just make for, another layer of reporting that you guys can leverage.
Now time is pretty straightforward.
We can extend this time range back, to pull data historically, or we can extend it for forward looking forecasting. Let's say if you guys wanted to use cube as a short range or long range planning tool, we can extend that out five, ten years, fifteen years even if you guys want.
Entities, products, markets, these are just the different ways I personally wanna slice and dice my data, but you it's essentially tailored to your needs. Right? If you guys want plant, location, etcetera, that's completely tailored to your needs.
Now the last thing I'm gonna go over here is in the source data tab.
The ability because, really, cube is that self-service system for you guys, the ability to update your models without the need of, like, a consultant, for example.
Right? So what you're able to do with a platform like this is you have a list of all of your connections, your ERP system, your CRM, your HRIS.
In this case, I'm looking at NetSuite.
And what I have the ability to do first is schedule imports. Right? So I want the data to refresh from NetSuite and pull into Qube. You can set that twice a day, three times a day. It does not matter. But you have the ability to set the frequency in which we import the data.
But what you can do throughout the day at any time is manually run that import. And when you click on that, what you're gonna get prompted with is the ability to resync the connection between NetSuite and Kube. And when you click on resync, what's happening is Kube is picking up any discrepancies between what exists in your source system and what exists in Cube.
Now, typically, with other solutions, you have to call and reach out to a consultant to make these changes for you. With Cube, you have the ability to map, those new accounts or those new or new GL accounts, new department codes, product codes, customer codes that exist in your source systems that don't exist in cube yet with the click of a button. Right? You click hide map there.
Hey. Look. We have this new utilities accounts. Where would you like this to be mapped?
I can just look up and control this mapping table myself. Once I'm satisfied with the selection, I hit save mapping.
Right away, am I able to just send that off and, import that new level of detail?
Now when we jump into Excel here, we're gonna go through the different ways we're able to plan. Now earlier, I mentioned the ability to duplicate your budget. So for example, we load in our original budget in twenty twenty four. We duplicate that into budget v three.
When I fetch the data between the two scenarios, there is no variance. Right? Same idea here with an OPEX variance report. When I fetch my data at the GL level, there's gonna be no variance here.
Now earlier, I introduced the concept of fetching data. Remember, that's pulling data from the cloud on a template. Let's say I'm a marketing manager here. We have actuals through a specific period. We wanna change that to May, for example.
What we're gonna notice when we fetch the data is my May column is going to update with actuals now because that's what I'm calling out. So I can start my forecast period beginning in June.
That's the ability to pull data. Now I wanna shift gears here and look at the ability to publish data, and that's writing data back to a back to cube at a, at a particular intersection on this template. So you can plan at the GL level. For example, I'm a marketing manager.
We're looking to purchase a video editing software starting in October, and it's gonna cost us five thousand dollars. What I have the ability to do is plan, the GL level, publish or write the data back, and Q keeps an audit trail of any type of publish that was created. Right? If I go to this demo environment here and click on the audit trail up here, what I can do is I can click on this data publish.
Cube opens up the, any change that somebody makes or writes back to the system. Cube will keep a trail of that. Right? So it lets you know the date, who did it, how many values got changed, which document sheet and software they're using.
Just Remember, everything I'm doing in Excel here, you're also able to do in Google Sheets, so it's gonna call that out. And I'll let you know what the values were before and what the values were after. In this case, we're planning software.
That's the scenario.
Here's the month. Here's the department.
Nothing was there before. It went up by five thousand dollars. Right?
But what you can also do is plan at a more detailed level because when I go ahead and fetch this data again and the cell is gonna become blue, I can drill down into this plan cell, but I don't really get a lot of detail in why there's a five thousand dollar increase there. But with an itemized planning schedule like this where I have notes in at the columns as well as vendor, for example, what I can do is I can call out why we need an why we need office supplies, for example. So this is the GL account I'm planning for. I can say, hey.
We need a new three d printer, and we're looking to purchase that in August, and it's gonna cost us, I don't know, ten thousand dollars. Now when I publish the data or write the data back to Qube at this level, when I jump back to my budget input screen here and we fetch my data, what you're gonna notice is that ten thousand dollars does appear there in August for office supplies. But when I drill down into the cell now, because I've planned at a more detailed level, I get the notes as well as the vendor associated with this line item. Right?
We can take this a step further when we're looking at headcount planning, because, of course, we can just type in what our headcount plan is gonna be at the GL level. But what if I wanted to see the employee makeup of, you know, how do we even get to that forty five thousand? Right? What we can do is we can create a headcount planning template like this, and we help you guys with the creation of a headcount plan.
You can have a list of all your drivers and assumptions for the year, and you can actually see each. Because you're planning at the employee level, you're gonna be able to drill down into any aggregated value and see the employee makeup. Right? So we'll go through a really quick example here where where I can insert a row into this template here. And let's say, for example, we wanted to hire an intern at the beginning of September.
In my marketing department, we don't know what the name of the employee is gonna be. So for the ID and the name, I'm gonna put to be determined. The title here is going to be intern. Interns are level one.
You can type in their salary, and you let q do or you let Excel do the work in terms of the template. Right? Sell formulas to spread the value of my salary expense because sometimes I do wanna see how we got to certain values. Right?
And on this template, we're tracking salary expense, tax expenses, benefits, but we're also tracking FTE and headcount. Right?
At this level, am I able to go ahead and write the data back to Qube?
So it's writing back employee level detail.
And what I can do is once this data gets sent back to Qube, I can go back to my budget input screen here, and I can refetch my data. And you're gonna notice starting in September, the data should increase. Right? So my FTEs go up from five to six in this particular department by adding that intern, which increases my salary expense by roughly three to four thousand dollars.
Now I can actually drill down into that forty nine k, and I don't only get the forty nine k now because I've planned at a more detailed level. I get the employee level detail. I can see who, who or the employee IDs for everybody that I'm planning for. In this case, I see that intern, and I see the salary of that intern. I see his his or her four zero one k percentage, the state that they work in, and so on and so forth. So when I drill back into an OPEX variance template and hit fetch, now I see the differences between my two scenarios, what I've originally planned and what I planned starting in June by adding an intern, by increasing or purchasing a three d printer as well as a video editing software. And we could see the same thing here with the department variance template.
The only department really worked on here was my marketing department.
But by making all of those changes, there's roughly a thirty five thousand dollar rate. Now I'm gonna switch gears here a bit and take a look at my manufacturing, template.
Just going back to the manufacturing cube here, what we're gonna notice is the way that this cube was built. Right? So in my account dimension, I can import my operating costs, which are split out between my variable and my fixed costs. I have different metrics that I'm tracking. So my selling price per ton, my quantity, my revenue, my production tons, my labor hours, and then I can also have a bunch of different assumptions that are needed for planning here as well. What my utility percentages, raw materials, product mix, what my land rent assumptions are for the year, so on and so forth. Right?
My product dimension includes all of the different products that we create and manufacture, then I have all of my plants listed out in their particular locations.
Now when I jump into my manufacturing template, the first thing you guys are gonna notice here is I have the ability to have my template and all of my assumptions stored by scenario.
So for my budget scenario, for example, it's using this subset of assumptions that I type out. Right? And my metrics, things like my revenue, my my, raw material costs, my utility costs, my operate my just my total operating expenses are driven based off of that level of assumption. Right? So what I can do is I can go ahead and write this subset of data back to Qube.
Right? I can go to my calculated metrics tab. Now those assumptions are stored in the back end, and those are the assumptions that are used to calculate my outputs for my budget scenario.
Right? From here, I can go ahead and write this level of data back to queue, And I can now move on to my wages and salaries where I have a list of all of my employees.
I have rates associated with the specific trade class for my employees.
And, you know, as a manager, I can just type in or really, yeah, I can type in the amount of hours that we're planning, each person work here. So I can type in twenty hours for this user, forty hours across the board for this guy.
And just to kinda speed this up here, we'll plug forty hours in for everybody else.
But, what I'm able to do is type in the hours that we're planning for each and every employee, having the rates pulled from our source system according to their trade class, and then having my salaries calculate based off of those hours that have been inputted, write the data back at this level for wages and salaries, and you're gonna notice that everything is targeting that budget scenario. Right? So when I'm looking at an operating cost report here, we can just fetch the data, and we have what our revenue was coming from my calculated metrics here. So for example, my total sales were three hundred and forty nine k, for that month.
And then I have all of my costs coming from that same template, but my wages and salaries for production were coming from my wages and salaries, template as well. Right? Let's say, for example, we close the books for January to start the year off, and I wanna see actuals for that column. All I have to do really is just call out that I wanna see actuals for that first column there.
I've now fetched my data, and I get what my actuals are. So this is just your classic eleven or one plus eleven forecast.
We can create variance templates here where we're now comparing what we budgeted versus what is actually coming from the system. Right? From here, we can go ahead and fetch the data, and I see let me just add that there. What my actuals were for January versus what I've planned for the year and all the variances involved.
Right? So that's everything I had planned for to show you guys. Just really the basics of Qube when it comes to reporting and planning.
We're gonna go through, some questions now. Feel free to ask anything you guys want as, again, this is your time, so please shoot away.
Awesome. Thank you so much. We have a lot of questions here. The chat was very active.
So we'll just go ahead and dive right in.
First one we have here, if there's no data for a particular cell, can we front facing tool.
Anything you can do in Excel, you're able to leverage with Qube.
So you can just simply write in a rule for that cell where it just has where it's hyphenated, or you can even lock off that cell if there's no data there or highlight it Perfect.
Next question. Where do we build semantic model with all the relationships between different dimensions and facts for multidimensional analysis?
You build all of your dimensions in the back end. So first and foremost, we offer an unlimited amount of cubes. So if you wanted a financial cube that has consolidated reporting, you know, just by department or division. And then for revenue planning and reporting, you wanted another cube that has a different slicing and, dicing measures.
You're able to create that. That's what a lot of our clients do. They might have a financial cube, a sales cube, for example, something that looks like this, where, you know, instead of slicing and dicing by product market and entity, your you have your reps rolling into the regions. You have have your different products.
You have your segments. You have where whether it's inbound or outbound as well as the stage of the deal. Right?
And then side by side, they'll have, like, a personal planning model where they have employee as a dimension. Right? We help you with implementing and standing up your, model or models.
We tailor it to your needs completely there.
Right. Next question. Is there a limit to the number of dimensions, and can these be changed as needed?
Yeah. So they can you can change the dimension names.
We'll we'll take a step back. We'll start with the first question, which was, is there a limit to number of dimensions? Now it's best practice to use eight dimensions per cube. As I've mentioned, you guys have the ability to create as many cubes as you want. So that's what we mean by cube offers that unlimited dimensionality.
With your financial model, if you wanna slice and dice by market, product, and entity, you're gonna be able to do that. But when it comes to revenue, if you want a closer look at, how we got to our outputs for revenue, You're gonna be able to create a new cube to track that. We call it, like, just your standard revenue and reporting cube. And within Excel, using that same idea that I was showing you guys earlier on the reporting front of adding ranges, you're able to extract data and have your cubes relate to one another.
Right? So you can show data from your revenue reporting cube. That has a different set of dimensions than your financial cube. And then you can input data at the employee level in this report, for example, coming from your payroll personal planning cube.
Very nicely said. Can we create a multiple hierarchy for a single dimension?
Absolutely.
So when we go to our demo environment here, you're not restricted to how many alternate hierarchies you guys have. This is best shown in the department dimension. Right? And this goes for any of the dimensions here.
But let's say you guys wanted to group up your, departments like so. So g and a has accounting and finance grouped up like this. Then you have your IT, HR, and executive grouped up rolling into g and a like so. You have product and engineering rolled up like so, sales and marketing together.
The tags function here is that idea of alternate hierarchies, and you have an unlimited amount of tags.
So let's say, for example, Christina was responsible for three different functions, and she we needed to see data grouped up in these three functions even though they appear in different places in your main hierarchy. I can create a tag called Christina's team, have the data from marketing exec and ops rolled up into that tag. So on a report, all I'm doing is I'm selecting Christina's team because that's the name of this tag, and then it aggregates the data across these three departments.
And this goes for, like, anything. Right? If you have locations, if you have business units, call centers, it doesn't matter. Divisions, you can roll them up however you want in an unlimited amount of ways.
Next question. Can we treat measures as a dimension?
So measures as in, like, the output of your values or if we're talking about units, these are usually found in the account dimension. So measures, units, anything quantity related, that's typically found in your account dimension. But if you had a, if you wanted to slice and dice by different measures, not necessarily values, but, like, actual slicing and dicing, mechanisms, then, yeah, of course, you can have that as a dimension.
Awesome. You wanna know what your measures are. If it makes sense in another dimension, we'd go that route, but we'd have to scope that out.
Cool. Next question.
Does it have the ability up to apply filters independently for each column as well as for the overall sheet in Excel?
Of course. Yeah. That's a good question. So, again, using and leveraging Excel for filters is something that we make use of.
So when I was going to this reporting tab here, what I have is the ability to have, like, a close through period filter where I set up all of my months that I want to be able to be selected for my actual through period. So let's say, for example, close the books for November. I can just split that to November, and then I have a rule set in place in Excel that, that populates that right up until November. Right?
And then I can fetch my data. That's filters directly on Excel. So remember making use of what Excel gives us and enhancing that. But what I could also do on a report like this is, hey.
I just wanna look at my enterprise product, right, and then fetch my data this way. So then this only gives me the slice and dice for that particular product for this report. Right? Or if I wanted to look at a particular entity across all my products, I'm able to filter them that way as well.
So you kinda get the best of both worlds with a product like this where you can see the data, across you can see the data and make use of filters in Excel, or you can just use cube filters. Right? Where I have markets as one of my filters. So if I just wanted to see central, I can fetch the data.
Just show me data for central. Right?
Awesome.
Alright. We have a few more here. Next one, does Cube have the ability to group dimension values and perform custom sorting?
Sorry. Can you repeat that?
Does Qube have the ability to group dimension values and perform custom sorting?
Yeah. That's that idea of tags. Right? Okay. I can group up any dimension I want and sort them however I want in Excel. So first, I create the sorting using tags, whatever hierarchy I want, whether it's a grouping of accounts, departments, markets, products, locations.
I create that grouping in the back end. And then in Excel, I can either use the Excel filters to filter whatever grouping I want here because all we're really doing with Excel is we're we're gauging the filters to give Qube what we're trying to call out. Right? So I want the product and engineering grouping, for example. When I hit fetch, cube's gonna pick up only the intersections that hit product and engineering. Or I can have them set as filters here where they're gonna be appearing up like this tags, and then you can go ahead and pick whatever tag that you want, and then the report's gonna, filter out accordingly.
Awesome. Okay. We have a couple more.
Can cube semantic model connect to external business intelligence tools like Tableau or Power BI?
Great question. A lot of our clients use Qube as an FP and A tool for reporting and planning, and then, you know, we have an open API. Right? This is your data at the end of the day. Power BI, Tableau, these are good products for visualizations, but they're not planning or forecasting tools. Right? They don't have your budget forecast scenarios all centralized in one place across all your source systems.
That's where Qube comes into play. We have an open API where you're able to grab data at will across all your different scenarios and then present them in Tableau or a Power BI. Right? If you guys have the resources on your team to extract the data, we have an open API.
The data is yours. Right? We can oh, we also have this data exporter here where you can call out which subset of data you wanna see and export it into a CSV for Power BI or Tableau to ingest as well. But, typically, what I've seen clients do is they just make use of our open API.
We have documentation we provide for you, and then you're able to pull at whatever frequency you want.
Great. Next question is sort of in that same vein. Do we move data to cube software from source systems?
Of course. You choose where the data is coming from when we're pulling it. Right? Whether it lives in a data warehouse, whether it lives in an ERP, whether it lives in an HRIS, or even on Excel itself or even like a text file. Doesn't matter where the data is. We're able to pull it.
Great. And then the last question I'm gonna throw at you. Does Qube have any aggregates and caching mechanism?
I don't know if I said that correctly.
Yeah. So I'm I'm assuming aggregate aggregations, you create as many aggregations as you want in your account dimension.
This is really useful for, like, consolidating. So both in the account dimension, we have entity, like, multi entity consolidations, multicurrency functionality as well there. So you can do that there.
For oh, sorry. What was the second part of that question?
Caching mechanisms.
Caching mechanisms. Not too sure what you mean by that, but, things like allocations, eliminations, you're able to do with Kube and Automate.
Great. Awesome. Thank you so much. I think we hit just about every what kind what kinds of infrastructure needs for cube software, or is it a PaaS slash SaaS model?
We tailor this to your needs. If you're talking about the different ways we're able to slice and dice, you let us know, and then we build the model for you accordingly. Right? If you're talking about infrastructure in regards to how your data needs to be set up, really doesn't matter.
If the data is on a cloud environment, we have rebuilt connectors in order to connect to your different data sources. If it lives in, like, a data warehouse, we have ways of connecting to your data warehouses, to automate this process as well. As long as you're able to get this data into, like, a CSV, we can go through just standing up like an s three server. You guys give dropping the data into set server for us or redirecting that file into set server, and then we take care of the ETL.
Doesn't like, this is a completely tailored model to your reporting and planning needs, if that makes sense.
Perfect.
Alright. I think we hit every question.
So with that, I will share some resources for people to access following this webinar. So I'm going to take over the screen share from you.
Yep. Stop sharing here.
Just go back over to here.
Find our presentation. There we go. Alright.
So if you liked what you heard today, but you still have some more questions or you want something a little bit more, specific to your needs, you can request a custom do cube demo. So that'll go over things that we've talked about today, but also answer some questions that may still be lingering in the back of your mind. Also, as I mentioned, you're going to be receiving an email with the webinar recording and the slides. So if you have any questions that you weren't able to answer today, feel free to respond to that email with your questions, and we'll make sure that someone's in touch with you.
Next is our biweekly newsletter, the finance fix. This is a great resource from our CEO and founder, Christina Ross. She covers a lot of information, about what's happening in the finance space, includes advice from people who work in the finance space, fellow CFOs, VPs of finance. And she also recommends different content pieces with some great information for anyone who's interested in knowing how they can improve their career or move up in their career or just improve, certain skills that will make you better at your job.
So there's lots of great information there, and I highly recommend you check it out. And lastly is our strategic finance pro Slack community. So this is a community full of like minded finance professionals that want a space to connect with other people who are in the same space as them. Now this space offers, lists of job opportunities, networking opportunities.
People will often ask each other questions in this community, and it's full of great, highly experienced finance professionals. So there's almost always someone there who can answer your questions for you. So if you're looking for a space where you just wanna bounce ideas off people and get extra opinions or just hang out and geek out over all finance things, this is an excellent space to do that, and I highly recommend you check it out. And it's also a great space to find out about webinars, that we will be hosting outside of this one that are also chock full of information that can be extremely useful in your finance career. So shameless plug there.
And with that said, I think we have come to the very end. So thank you everyone again for coming. I hope you enjoyed, and thank you, Liban, for leading this conversation. You did an excellent job.
And, yeah, I hope everyone has a great weekend. Thank you again.
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