Strategic Planning On Line

I saw a demo this morning of software designed to help with planning, budgeting, and accreditation. It's sort of like openigor on steroids (but with some different feature sets). It's very pretty, as you can tell from the portal that comes up after log-in.

It's called Strategic Planning On Line, at www.strategicplanningonline.com. The idea is to integrate planning (goals and objectives) to budgeting, so that there is a direct link between the two. Items can be individually approved. As a bonus, accreditation objectives are broken out and can be assigned to individuals. The detail below shows some of the planning interface. It's all Web 2.0 (no click and refresh) running on .NET with SQL Server on the back end.


The screenshot below shows a budgeting sheet. There's a lot of detail here, with the ability to plan multiple years. Items are coded by general ledger types for intelligent reporting.

I have spent under an hour looking at the system, so I'm by no means an expert, but my first impressions are that it's a well-thought out and very cleverly programmed product. I think it could be a great management and institutional effectiveness tool if the administrative staff is really behind it. This kind of detailed planning very likely represents a cultural shift for an administration, with all that implies.

I don't know about pricing yet, but the software can run locally or (soon) remotely as a service.