Centage Continues to Innovate the Future of Finance with Planning Maestro

Framingham, MA (April 28, 2022) – Centage Corporation (www.centage.com), the leading provider of cloud-based FP&A solutions to SMB finance teams, celebrates three years of providing innovative budgeting and planning solutions to the modern office of Finance, with Planning Maestro, the first-ever FP&A platform designed specifically for the mid-size market. 

“Small and mid-size companies are the true economic engines in our country, employing close to half of all American workers. Each of these companies has leaders that seek to run successful businesses and financial health is at the heart of driving their success. We wanted to offer small and mid-size customers a robust planning and analytics platform that was robust, easy to use, easy to implement and helped them reach value and financial health quickly,” explains John Murdock, president and CEO of Centage.

As a small business itself, Centage understands the connection between smart, real-time insights into a company’s financial health, its performance and ability to compete and grow efficiently. 

“Every company starts out small. They become household names when they have the organizational intelligence and processes to make smart bets and capitalize on opportunities. We see that as our role, and our mantra: help every business compete and build amazing businesses in their respective categories,” Mr. Murdock said.

To Centage, empowering this important market meant more than providing an alternative to spreadsheet-based budgets. The company set its sights on creating an ​​affordable and intuitive, cloud-native platform that lets its clients easily budget, forecast financial performance, analyze results and share critical information across the organization. 

Vision Achieved. Benefits Delivered.

Out of the gate, Planning Maestro offered companies of all sizes a better way to plan, budget, forecast and report their financial performance. Its analytics dashboards literally lets financial teams anticipate the future by testing the impact of endless what-if scenarios. 

With that insight in hand, business leadership reap the ultimate benefit: the ability to make better decisions faster and with confidence. 

Built to Address the Reality of Today’s Business

Every business competes in an environment that can be improved with automation and digital transformation, where rapid insights and analytics directly correlate to market advantage. When Centage set out to design a new solution for midsize companies, the goal was to feature:

• Modern Architecture. Growing and doing well shouldn’t come with the pain of scaling up platforms. Planning Maestro was designed using the most modern Cloud technologies. Not only is it quick and easy to implement, companies can scale up or down in real time.
  
• Super-Smart Automations. FP&A professionals want more time to be strategic advisors to their peers in other departments. Planning Maestro’s automation capabilities streamline routine tasks - significantly reducing the FP&A professional’s busy work so they can focus on using timely insights to help their companies grow.
  
• Connections to GL / ERP. Planning Maestro integrates and normalizes data from the company’s GL and ERP system, feeding the models and forecasts automatically, and allowing leaders to obtain a direct line of sight into the business. The integrations also ensure that the data is highly accurate.
  
• Built-In Financial Intelligence. Pre-programmed business logic and accounting rules allow CFOs to create plans that accurately represent their organization’s structure, generate forward-looking plans and financial statements, as well as ensure that all information and transactional data entered by end-users flow through the financial statements according to the way the business works and GAAP accounting rules.

Continued Focus on Product Innovation

Centage has been on a constant quest to drive value for users of Planning Maestro. In the three years since its launch, the company has released one product improvement after another - including the most recent, a premium app for QuickBooks Online Advanced users:

Flexibility with Product EditionsCentage introduced three editions of Planning Maestro: Standard, Professional and Enterprise, so that every company, regardless of size, can benefit from modern business planning.Advanced Workflow CollaborationCentage released advanced workflow collaboration to help users improve their planning process even more. As a result, individual users can create their own workflows, and assign tasks to budget contributors, manage budget creation activities in real time, among other features.Increase Strategic Insights and Visibility with Intelligent DashboardsOn Planning Maestro’s second anniversary, Centage released intelligence dashboards -- easy-to-digest views of business performance data that users across the organization can explore in unique and meaningful ways to take action in their business.Connect to Data Sources in Real TimeCentage has been relentless in its drive to free data from its siloes so it can be used to advance the organization. Offering  16 major ERPs and accounting systems, including the recently announced Planning Maestro App for QuickBooks Online Advanced.

Industry Award Winning & Customer Trusted

Since it’s launch in April of 2019, Planning Maestro has received multiple awards and analyst accolades, including:

• Three years of Dresner Advisory Services awarding Planning Maestro with its Industry Excellence Award 
• Golden Bridge naming Centage the Most Innovative Company of the Year in 2021
• And we’ve received multiple Stevie Awards, including the Gold Stevie award in the Financial Services category. 

In addition, in less than two years, Planning Maestro delivered a 200% lift in subscription revenue. Today, Planning Maestro has over 10,000 users across numerous industry sectors.

“We are always honored to receive awards for innovation. But the calls I really look forward to are the ones from our clients. They’re thrilled with Planning Maestro, and often call to tell me their capabilities wish list. It’s gratifying to know that they’re planning to grow alongside us. As CEO, I want our clients to view us as their partners in success. Planning Maestro is the foundation of those partnerships,” Mr. Murdock said. 

About Centage
Centage is a leading provider of modern FP&A software solutions that empower Finance teams to lead the way to a stronger, more agile business. Our cloud platform, Planning Maestro, makes sophisticated budgeting, planning, and forecasting easy and accessible. Intuitive automation accelerates workflows and improves accuracy, enabling Finance leaders to deliver reliable information and meaningful insights at the speed of today’s business. Centage serves over 10,000 users worldwide. Visit Centage.com, follow on LinkedIn, or visit the Centage Blog for the latest insights.