Comshare ``Wows'' Bonita Bay Properties With Analytic Capabilities of its Management Planning and Control Software.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.--(BUMicrosoft SQL Server 7.0

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A ge budget holders of each division. Consolidation was typically a seven-month process and the opportunity to analyze information at the upper most levels of the company left much to be desired.

After an exhaustive search, Bonita Bay Properties decision-makers chose Comshare(R) Inc.'s (Nasdaq:CSRE) integrated solution to its budgeting, analysis and consolidation needs. Comshare is the innovator of software solutions for management planning and control (MPC), which includes planning, budgeting, financial consolidation, management reporting and analysis.

The Challenge

Bonita Bay is a rapidly growing company with diverse holdings. The company's existing spreadsheet budgeting system was very difficult to consolidate and analyze. "We've always done our budgeting and forecasting on Excel spreadsheets," says Agnew. "A number of years ago, we were a single project developer with a simple organizational structure. Since then, we've become a multi-development, multi-project company. There is an awful lot going on with a very complex corporate structure. Budgeting and forecasting with spreadsheets was just too overwhelming. It took too long, and there were too many manual processes, too much re-entering of data, and too much work in cross-allocating across companies that had to be done manually. As the company grew, the problems with that old solution also grew."

Many times the budget was not finalized until the end of the first quarter, yet decisions had to be made on outdated information. Flaws in Bonita Bay's existing system could take weeks to detect, long after appropriate, corrective action could be taken. Bonita Bay needed a centralized data repository and a consistent methodology so that business managers could plan their budgets with more current information. Headquarters, in turn, needed an easy way to consolidate numbers from its diverse holdings and act upon the information in a timely fashion.

The Solution

Agnew's challenge as Bonita Bay's director of management information systems, was two-fold. She needed to provide a stable computing environment for all activities of the corporation and keep an eye on process improvements and information management. To meet these challenges, Agnew led a cross-functional team to address Bonita Bay's budgeting needs. Fifteen vendors were identified and a half-dozen of them were called in to do more in-depth presentations.

"When we talked to other people in our industry, many of them were hanging their heads just like we were," remarks Laura Agnew, director of management information systems for Bonita Bay. "They were in a morass of Excel spreadsheets; they seemed to feel that that was just the way life was. We thought, there's just got to be a better way! And we believe that we've found it with Comshare."

Comshare BudgetPLUS(TM) application software running on a Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 platform proved to be the application that best fit Bonita Bay's needs and then some. "The added bonus was that Comshare software ran on Oracle, Essbase, and SQL Server 7.0 databases. We chose BudgetPLUS first, then selected SQL Server 7.0 because that combination gave us a good position for leveraging our resources and other Microsoft applications."

"To tell you the truth, Comshare really wowed us," admits Agnew. "All of the products that we looked at would have assisted us in having a more stable budgeting process, but Comshare gave us the facilities that we thought would grow as our company grew. Comshare's solution wasn't just budgeting. It also gave us the ability to perform analyses on our budget and measure what the effects of decisions were.

Comshare also addressed Bonita Bay's issues with reporting financial data. "That was an added joy," remarks Agnew, "and the analytic power built into Comshare BudgetPLUS was something that no other software offered."

The Benefits to Bonita Bay Properties, Inc.

Agnew's confidence that decision-making at Bonita Bay will be taken to the next level is reflected in her vision. "Currently, the vice president of finance feels that we probably spend 99% of our time manipulating the data and the other one percent on analysis," continues Agnew. "We think that Comshare will not only get us to the 80/20 level, but will probably do better than that. Knowing the amount of time we spend on consolidation and manipulation now, that in itself will save us significantly in the first year."

Newly found analytic capabilities built into Comshare software inspires great plans for the future at Bonita Bay. "We plan to use Comshare software to help us hone in on variances," speculates Agnew. "Decision-making will be improved because what the information tells us will not be masked by layers of corporate structure. And the ability of Comshare software to alert us to problems and opportunities very easily and interactively is another big plus."

When asked what the major business benefits are of Comshare management planning and control software for Bonita Bay, Agnew has no problem answering what she envisions: "Better information for making decisions more quickly, more productive use of staff time, and more job satisfaction for our analysts."

About Bonita Bay Properties, Inc.

With annual revenues of over $120M, Bonita Bay is a small but rapidly growing company with diverse holdings including country club and marina operations, real estate development and maintenance, and associated food and beverage operations. To find out more about Bonita Bay Properties, visit the company's Web site at www.bonitabayproperties.com.

About Comshare, Inc.

Comshare is the innovator of software applications for management planning and control (MPC), which includes planning, budgeting, financial consolidation, management reporting and analysis. Comshare's MPC applications deliver business-critical information that can be used to make sound planning and management decisions. In business for more than 30 years, Comshare is one of the top independent software companies, with customers around the world, many of which are Fortune 500 and Financial Times Top 1000 companies. Comshare is a Microsoft Certified Solution Provider and an Oracle Business Alliance Partner. For more information on Comshare, call 1-800-922-7979, e-mail [e-mail], or visit Comshare's Web site at www.comshare.com.

Comshare is a registered trademark and Comshare BudgetPLUS is a trademark of Comshare Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.