Prophix Customer Ask Me Anything: Advancing My Career With CPM

I’ve had some great conversations with Prophix recently. We have the Continuous Success Package (CSP), and it came up on a recent call with our Customer Success Manager that I was promoted from Senior Financial Analyst to Finance Director.

Innovating with Prophix’s software played a role in that career advancement, so the Prophix Team asked me to share some insights. Perhaps others can learn from my experience. So here I am!

This is the text of our conversation.

When did you start using Prophix?

We purchased Prophix in February of 2020, we started training in March, and we were up and running, although timidly, by June. Now with over a year of using Prophix, our reliance and confidence in the product have grown.

How have you used the CSP?

Our primary goal was to have Prophix up and running for our 2021 annual budgeting process, which kicked off in Q4 2020. Using the Info Flex process, we were able to break our complicated general ledger accounts down into manageable “Budget Units.”

We use Prophix for financial reporting and Fixed Asset tracking and reporting. I have also used it for GL detail drill-across when needing to research things in detail. This has made reconciling accounts and recognizing trends much easier.


That’s me on the right!

What are some cool things you’ve done with the software?

We have 14 different sets of books/databases. The Prophix team set us up with a daily integration process that consolidates these books. This alone has saved us a lot of time. We use an inter-company balancing system between the books, and previously we reconciled this balance manually. I have built a report that compares the inter-company transaction balance across the different sets of books. We now know when and where a discrepancy arises – and we can correct it quickly.

We have been getting Managers set up with automatic email delivery of their financial reports using the Report Binder. Setting up the KPI calculated accounts in Model Manager has been a pretty cool capability, too.

When did you get promoted and how has your role changed?

I was promoted to Finance Director on January 1st, 2021. My roles and responsibilities have expanded for Finance-related items and management reporting. I have been working much more closely with executives and managers since.

What advice would you have for other Prophix customers who are early in their journey?

Use your imagination. Brainstorm. The capabilities of what can be done are custom and unique to different scenarios.

An area that I could have done much better is to ‘sell’ Prophix to the standard users, helping them become more comfortable with Prophix. Some of our users have felt intimidated by Prophix when we first introduced them. Even now, we have some that would prefer to receive emailed reports, rather than log in and view/download themselves. Very few of our standard users know how to use the data view.

What ideas would you like to implement using Prophix going forward?

We hope to add a Personnel Cube this summer and are looking into the idea of creating a Sales Cube to ‘slice and dice’ detailed sales data, customer information, etc.


And that’s the text from our interview. If you have questions for me, let me know below and I’ll respond when I can!

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Interesting conversation. Did you face any hiccups while moving your budgeting to Prophix?

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I really enjoyed this interview. As a twist I’m going to ask a question based on the photo. What is your favorite hike or climb that you have done?

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Would be curious to know if you have a wishlist in Prophix

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This is more of a question based on the photo - how long did you have to train before you took on that great climb?

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Congratulations on the promotion! You mention one area that you could’ve done better in was helping standard users become more comfortable with Prophix, anything in particular you would’ve relayed differently to them?

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Most of the problems we had were related to fear of the unknown and unfamiliarity with an updated process. Overall it went easier than most expected. Most of the heavy lifting is done on the setup/accounting side. We were able to make our templates look similar to prior years which helped.

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Thanks. I have two, although both can be crowded, two of my favorite hikes that I’ve done are Longs Peak in Rocky Mt NP and Vernal/Nevada Falls in Yosemite.

Good question. Yes, 1) get the managers set up with auto delivery of monthly (in some cases daily) reports; 2) get a personnel cube up and running 3) create a sales cube to show sales by customer/sales by region/AR Aging etc

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I try to do a couple big climbs per year. I’ll start out slow in the spring doing smaller local hikes and take two to three months to condition myself to hiking longer distances. By July/August, I feel a bit more comfortable making a big climb.

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I could have introduced them to the product earlier, emphasized the ease of logging in and accessing reports, encouraged use earlier and more often, and made myself more available to questions and support. We did a lot of these things, but I could have done them earlier and more often.

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This was a very interesting interview! How many staff do you have actively building out your model?

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Hi Emily, thanks for the question. We have four accounting staff who work in Prophix regularly, but two of us who are actively working in model manager and building reports.

Very interesting interview. What has been the biggest help for you to learn the software- formal training, on-the-job mentoring, or just “having a go” and figuring it out as you go along? What is your main approach for training your staff?

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Discussion usually brings out the ideas and then having a go helps fine tune the idea. The formal training was helpful to get us up and running and to create a base of knowledge. The end users training was minimal. We set up the templates and reports for them and then showed them where to access. Advanced user training was mostly formal, hands on, and learn as you go.

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Congratulations on your promotion! Way to get in there and leverage the software to your benefit!

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Congratulations on your success with Prophix! With 14 sources, it sounds like you work with a diverse group. Just curious, how many users do you have set up? And have you made any progress getting them invested in using data views? We’ve found we have much more success working in smaller groups, making sure the content is relevant to how they would use the data views for their own work. Wish you the best and continued success!

Hi Ryan. We have 50 users. And the different companies can be quite diverse in the nature of their business. Most end users use it for budget templates or viewing reports, but there are a handful who I have worked closely with that use data views and the drill across feature. But you are right, when I work one on one with an end user, they end up with something much more relevant and useful to their needs.

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Very interesting article.

Congrats on your Promotion!!

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