Rivet Crossfire—An FRx Replacement to Knock Your Socks Off
Introduction
August 29, 2009. Last month, I went to Denver to the offices of Rivet Software. I went to see a state of the art financial reporting solution that I was hoping might be an FRx replacement. Well let me tell you—I saw that and so much more.
For the last couple years, I’ve really been keeping my eyes open for my clients and prospects who will need (or want) to replace FRx when the time comes. If you’ve been keeping up with the future of FRx, for everyone but the users of one of Microsoft’s accounting systems (GP, SL, AX, NAV), that day will be here sooner rather than later.
So I’ve been watching and leisurely reviewing FRx replacements in my spare time. {smile} It’s been interesting and there are some good products out there.
But what I saw in Denver blew my dress up, knocked my socks off, and in short was just astounding. I don’t want to build it up too much but this is the future.
Crossfire
The product I saw at Rivet Software is called Crossfire. Together with an elite group of longtime FRx consultants, I was able to work with the product for three days. Here’s a quick laundry list of what I liked about Crossfire:
- Design in Excel with live data
- Use data from modules other than just the GL
- Web delivery
- Control who sees what
- Benchmarking: compare to industry data
- Excel environment allows easy calculations using statistics
- Excel environment allows charts and graphs
- Build a reporting package right in Excel
- Cool drag and drop interface
- Excellent implementation of “trees” (to use FRx terminology)
- Technology used is the wave of the future, based on international standards
From a user’s perspective, I really loved having the design environment in Excel. Since I know it extremely well, I could leverage that knowledge. It’s not like having to start over with a brand new product. From a manager’s perspective, I loved the technology behind the scenes. More on that another day.
The Rest of the Story
Who’s Rivet Software though? What’s their background and can they be trusted with such a mission critical task as financial reporting?
Turns out they’re the ones who created FRx in the first place. The most successful financial reporting software ever to hit the mid-market was their creation. Founder Mike Rohan and his team are brilliant visionaries—and they’ve done it again.
I’m crazy excited.
Watch for a video tutorial coming soon.