UNIT4 CODA Asserts Itself with ‘Destination: Control’ Release
October 25, 2011 Alex Woodie
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There’s nothing worse than loose or wobbly financials. Your company’s core business could be running along great, just the picture of order and efficiency, yet be overshadowed by the mess that is your general ledger, AP, AR, and related processes. UNIT4 CODA, which touts itself as a provider of best-in-breed accounting software, hopes to help its customers get a handle on their financials with the 12th major revision of its flagship Coda Financials software, codenamed “Destination: Control.” Coda Financials is a Java-based application that includes general ledger, accounts payable, accounts receivable, project accounting, billing, budgeting and forecasting, spend management, and reporting and business intelligence features. It’s used by more than 6,000 organizations around the world (including hundreds of IBM i shops) and generates about $120 million in revenue for its parent company, the Dutch software and services giant UNIT4. Company officials say customers ditch the accounting modules in their ERP and line-of-business apps and standardize on Coda Financials due to its capability to handle complex issues that face global multi-national corporations, including supporting multiple currencies, languages, and subsidiaries. It’s no secret that accounting is often a weak spot for many ERP software packages, and Coda Financials has developed a comfortable niche to exploit it. UNIT4 CODA has always touted its independence from ERP vendors, and with the recent launch of Coda Financials version 12, it’s highlighting superior control over finances. The company says Coda Financials–Destination: Control implements three new layers of financial control. The first layer is Control Manager, a financial control framework that was previously available as part of the product’s Link architecture, but now comes standard with the product. Control Manager “lays over all the disparate processes and provides visibility of the control activities that are buried inside the business,” including those related to people, processes, and applications, the company says. Control Manager is the third core element of the Link architecture, along with the “Single Financial Model,” which creates a single version of the financial truth for all the other applications a customer may have (such as HR, payroll, CRM, manufacturing, and point-of-sale), and the “Interoperability Framework,” which does the grunt work of connecting with those disparate applications. (Since many Coda customers will be ditching the financials package that came with their ERP system, ensuring interoperability with the other ERP modules is a big focus for the vendor.) The second new layer in version 12 is a series of 10 “power control” features that bring Coda Financials users new editing, graphing, reporting, viewing, and data entry capabilities. The power controls are designed to make it easier for users to get more insight out of large amounts of data, the company says. The third new layer is a series of 10 “precision control” features that give users new capabilities in the areas of formatting, language displayed, user-defined details, field-picking, and other configurations that affect how users interact with the software. The company says the new precision controls will help users to focus on the data that’s important to them, and to do so with greater consistency and transparency. UNIT4 CODA CEO Steven Pugh says version 12 will help customers accurately connect, view, and control the various information sources that impact financial operations, whether the customer is a retailer, manufacturer, transport company, or financial services organization. “The control framework eliminates the risk and potential cost of non-compliance,” Pugh says in a press release. “The new visibility, accuracy, analytic, and reporting features far surpass the control capabilities of financial applications attached to enterprise resource planning suites.” The cost of non compliance extends to bad press for companies when bad things happen financially, says Brian Sommer, president of Vital Analysis. “No CFO wants to be on the cover of the Financial Times or BusinessWeek explaining away their recent earnings or fraud fiasco,” he states in UNIT4 CODA’s press release. “At the root of most of these matters is a serious breakdown in controls and trust … Smart CFOs want more of accounting software than just debits and credits; they want capabilities such as those in Coda’s new Destination Control release.” For more information on Coda Financials, see the company’s website at www.unit4.com/products/coda. RELATED STORIES IBM i Push Pays for Financials Specialist UNIT4 CODA Key to Resell UNIT4 CODA Financials Superior Bulk Logistics Taps UNIT4 CODA for Financials UNIT4 CODA Touts Financial App on IBM i
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