PCS Consulting maintains an intelligence knowledge base of the top Profitability & Costing software solutions and vendors. This software intelligence and vast experience implementing these software solutions, allow PCS Consulting to provide clients with critical insight for making informed profitability software selection decisions and provide the implementation assistance expertise required for success. Learn about our Software Intelligence Briefings. Software Briefings

Profitability & Cost Management Software Vendors

A brief introduction of the most prominent Profitability & Cost Management software vendors is provided below. Click on logo or link to learn more about each vendor.  To obtain a software briefing for one or more of these vendors Go To Briefings

With the acquisition of BusinessObjects in February 2008, 16 months after BusinessObjects acquired ALG Software in October 2006, SAP now provides one of the leading “Best of Breed” activity-based Profitability & Cost Management (PCM) modeling and reporting solutions.

PCM is the stand-alone SAP BusinessObjects Profitability & Cost Management activity-based modeling solution, with optional linkage to SAP Business Warehouse (BW) and BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) reporting and analysis.  It supports activity-based customer, product, and channel profitability reporting and analysis, time-based ABC, transaction costing, "what-if" analysis, and driver-based planning.

SAP also provides a Profitability Analysis component (CO-PA) within its manufacturing Enterprise Controlling modules to provide costs needed for work-in-process and cost-of-goods-sold costing.  CO-PA relies heavily on the online transaction processing structures and core database tables within SAP ERP. While it can perform basic activity-based costing, it is far more cumbersome, has fewer features and less flexible.  For these reasons, it is not considered a leading ABC solution in today’s market.

Acorn Systems' specialty is providing activity costing at the transaction record level with Time-Based activity equations that recognize how different services, products, customers and channels consume activities differently. Professor Kaplan has written much about the "Time-Based" methodology, but it is the combination of the time based equations with the transaction costing and cost object data structures that provide the most unique characteristics of this solution. Organizations with high volumes of activity transactions who want to determine customer and product costs through use of these activity transactions, will be most attracted to this solution.

SAS Acquired ABC Technologies in 2002, who had OROS, then the top selling ABC software. The current product is SAS ABM (Activity-Based Management) and continues to provide the traditional activity based costing along with complimentary SAS OLAP and SAS ETL, often sold as a bundled solution. Sometimes referred to as traditional ABC, SAS ABM provides the classic resource to activity to cost object cost assignments through resource and activity drivers. The basic cost architecture remains the same from the Oros days, with the exception of dimensionality. AS ABM provides unlimited user defined dimensions, used predominately for reporting, provided through the SAS OLAP solution or by other third party tool.

Oracle’s newest activity-based costing and profitability application, Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management (HPCM) was announced in July 2008. Read Press Release.  HPCM is part of Oracle's Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) suite.  The application leverages Essbase, their industry leading OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) server, for multidimensional calculation, reporting, analysis and scenario modeling.

With the HPCM release, Oracle retired two “old” Activity Based Costing solutions Oracle ABM and HBM, which they obtained through acquisitions.  Oracle ABM (originally developed in the 80s and known as Activa) was acquired from Price Waterhouse in 1998.  Hyperion Business Modeling (HBM) came with the 2007 Hyperion acquisition (which came from Hyperion's acquisition of Sapling in 1999).  The PeopleSoft ABM, that came with the PeopleSoft acquisition in 2004, is still available but is not a leading ABC solution in today’s market.

QPR CostControl is a Netherlands based software vendor with offices and alliance partners throughout Europe, North America, Australia, Asia, Africa and South America.  The company is dedicated to their single activity-based costing & profitability solution “CostPerform”.  Originally a cost management consulting firm successfully implementing the CostPerform solution for several years, in 2001 purchased the business from QPR Software Plc, a Finish software company.

CostPerform supports all of the activity based costing functions and features expected with modern ABC software. Some unique features include; robust multi-level resource and activity cost assignments for waterfall and shared-service cost allocations, strong resource capacity consumption modeling, flexible cost assignments from and to folder levels in hierarchical structures, and visual business process modeling of the model structure and calculated results. The solution is proven with many customers, mostly in Europe, and now growing in the U.S., Australia and beyond.  It is very reasonably priced, offering most of the functions, features and technology provided by the larger vendors for a fraction of their price. The solution is sold globally through its Netherlands, U.S., Australia offices, and through partners in the rest of Europe, Asia, Africa and South America.

Other Software Vendors

A brief introduction of other less prominent ABC software vendors is provided below. Click on logo to the vendor's website.

MyABC/M is the newest player in the ABC market. The Brazilian based company, with offices now also in Mexico, was founded in 1993 as a reseller of the ABC Technologies' Oros software in Brazil until ABC Technologies was acquired by SAS in 2002. MyABC/M is a clone of Oros, with several functional and ease of use enhancements, but also some of the things we never liked about Oros. For example, the limitation of the three modules (resource, activity and cost objects), lack of bi-directional web-based user interface, single period centric, and limited "what-if" and planning capabilities. However, the price point is very low compared to other major vendors.

Lead Software has been providing ABC software worldwide since 1992. It’s Activity Analyzer Version 8.0, was released in 2009. It has been implemented in most every industry, but has some special features for manufacturing and government sectors. It is best suited for organizations requiring a stand-alone activity based costing software solution at a low cost. The purchase price is much less than most of the other vendors, while still providing good ABC functionality. It runs on Windows XP and Server /2003 or higher, with 32 bit architecture.

Pilbara Group is a subsidiary of ABM Technologies, an Australian company and established a U.S. presence as Pilbara in 2002 after winning contracts for the United States Navy. Pilbara provides an on-demand Software-As-A_Service (SAAS) version as well as customer installed software. Its customer base is predominately government (e.g. Navy, Coast Guard) and the functionality of the solution reflects that focus.

proDacapo is a predominant Sweden vendor, providing Activity Based Costing software in Sweden and neighboring countries since 1994. The ABC software is only one part of an overall Performance Management suite of products, including Scorecard, Business Planning and Process Management. The ABC tool has many strong features and sells in the price range of the top vendors. While being successful in the Nordic countries, there are no U.S. customers or distributors.

FlexABM is an ABC software solution provided by Canadian consulting firm Corporate Renaissance Group, a consulting firm with offices in Canada, the U.S., South Africa and India.  FlexABM is marketed to perform full reciprocal costing, data modeling and dynamic reporting.