Phocas product highlights 2025

As we reflect on 2025 globally, topics that dominated world news include artificial intelligence, tariffs, natural disasters and ongoing conflicts. For our customers working across the manufacturing, distribution and retail sectors these events manifest in ongoing market volatility, rising costs in the supply chain and the need to plan for ongoing disruption.

At Phocas, our goal to make people feel good about their data seems to be more relevant in turbulent economic times. We are pleased that the Phocas products are a trusted resource providing our 45,000+ daily users with essential data visibility so everyone can respond quickly and confidently to any change or opportunity that is identified.

This year Phocas released over 40 new features across the BI and FP&A platform so businesspeople working in sales and finance can continue to meet budget goals, grow or drive efficiency.

Here’s a snapshot of some of these features designed to help you automate manual tasks and focus on high value work.

New features for sales professionals

It is well known that data-driven sales teams achieve faster growth. That’s why this year we released new ways to help sales reps build pipeline faster and increase revenue. It is common for sales reps to spend much of the day searching for information and doing administration so their time selling is limited. Phocas aims to give them time back through fast access to insights that translate into revenue-driving potential.

Sales teams working in Phocas Analytics benefit from knowing customer buying behaviour, margin exceptions and product shortage so when this information is up-to-date and readily available on dashboards, they can focus on meeting customer needs and selling more.

Flex modes

The new Flex Modes gives sales team flexibility to get quick, easy access to data and answer questions on their own.

Calculations in the grid allow people to add calculated columns with formulas like a revenue target based on percentage uplift. They update automatically as your numbers change, and when saved as a favorite you can share the results.

Simultaneous updates in Flex Modes offers three connected views. The grid for analysis, charts for visual interpretation and transaction details for validation. Adjust your date range and the views update automatically. All your data is connected so you can drill anyway you want, visualize and trace back to the source data without needing to rebuild for every query.

Users can bring in data in from multiple sources and pull in measures from other streams like cost data alongside sales data as well as set different date ranges. Count measures can also be included so everyone can work with data flexibly or their way.

Once the calculated columns are added to your grid, then you can visualize them with the chart builder. Save as a favorite so you can keep these charts and share.

New Sales Insights product to accelerate growth

It was great to launch the new Sales Insights product this year to solve a recurrent problem in sales team and that is knowing the right people to call. The feedback has been terrific and has helped sales teams prioritize their time where it counts.

The new tool is built on the RFM methodology (Recency, Frequency and Monetary) and uses your customer data in Phocas Analytics to group customers into 5 or 10 segments like ‘champions’ at the top or ‘at-risk’ at the bottom. It helps manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers focus on accounts with the highest potential return and clearly summarizes all customers that qualify in each segment.

Insights accelerates growth by helping sales teams maximize revenue by directing effort to high-value customers. When sales teams focus on high-value opportunities, they can reduce cost-to-serve by up to 20% and boost revenue per rep by up to 15%.

The tool is great for new reps to get up to speed quickly by getting clarity on their territories through clear categorization of customers. Insights help them to identify opportunities, understand customer dynamics and hit quotas faster.

A 5% increase in customer retention produces more than a 25% increase in profit. Too often, at-risk customers aren’t visible until they’re gone. Insights instantly surface those accounts so sales and customer team can protect the bottom line by re-engaging lapsed accounts.

Phocas Sales Insights helps build high performing sales rep because they have data at their fingertips and can prioritize their time and selling goals. This detailed information makes reps more in tune with where customers are at so every call they make is more strategic and informed.

Phocas CRM turns data into deals

According to Gartner research, internal complexity causes 20% of stalled and lost deals. When you don’t have clear visibility into your sales pipeline, deals drag, leads go cold and teams miss key chances to win customers. Phocas CRM gives your sales team clear, up-to-date control of the pipeline. It cuts lead drop-off, moves deals forward faster and speeds up revenue.

This year we have made the CRM user interface more intuitive, so you see sales history, contact details, notes and performance insights in one view.

Other new features that reduce the administration and help teams focus on selling include the 2-way calendar sync with Microsoft Outlook that eliminates double-entry. When sales rep schedule an appointment in Outlook they will see it in Phocas and all updates in CRM also sync to through people’s calendars.

New mobile optimization in Phocas CRM also gives field reps fast, seamless access to customer information and better search and filters make finding accounts instant. Searchable column filters plus one-click clear filters get you to the right data in seconds.

New features for finance teams

The Financial Statements product continues to be popular for finance teams working across multi entity businesses. Using the consolidated data platform they can create individual Profit and Loss statements for branches and divisions, bespoke management reports as well as report on the overall group performance quickly and easily each month.

This year we have added the journal feature to Phocas Financial Statements to help finance teams have a structured way to manage consolidations, eliminations and normalizations. This is done in the same environment where performance is analyzed and reported.

Finance teams can create journals once, then use them every month without rebuilding from scratch or switching between systems. It works by tagging journals with trading entities, departments and transactional properties so everything can be analyzed then use formulas to automate calculations within journals. It can also handle multi-date journals when you need to load data across several periods.

Intercompany eliminations and management add-backs happen directly in Phocas through integrated journals but they're kept in a separate stream from your ERP data. You make adjustments without affecting the source data and toggle them on or off to see different views.

The new Streams and Scenarios menu lets you combine multiple budgets (like merging separate FY24, FY25, and FY26 streams), compare actuals with and without adjustments and switch what appears in your report without rebuilding. Finance people can drill into transaction details during live meetings with the board or management across all your statements.

Budget and Forecasts enhancements

Budgets and Forecasts in Phocas allows finance teams to revamp outdated budget processes as well as budget in more detail and securely get key departments to buy in and get involved.

This year we have empowered finance teams more by giving them instant visibility into future performance and remaining capacity. Phocas Budgets and Forecasts allows finance teams to now build a baseline before the year ends. Split Baselines let you stitch together a baseline from multiple sources using actuals for the first half of the year or a budget stream to fill the gaps for months that aren't closed yet.

The new ‘Remaining Budget’ toggle instantly switches your view to display ‘Budget minus Actuals’, showing exactly how much budget capacity remains. This change allows you to shift the focus from expense tracking to capacity planning.

Tabbed reviews turn your hierarchy levels into tabs so you can view net profit or sales for each trading entity side-by-side and any changes you make in a tab automatically update your consolidated budget on the main view.

Every time a new salesperson joins, someone has to manually map them to a budget line or risk data gaps. The new ‘Wildcard Mapping’ changes that with a simple rule called map ‘Any Sales Rep’ to a specific account. As soon as a new staff member appears in your ERP, they're automatically included in the forecast.

‘Flat View’ removes hierarchy levels so you can copy and paste directly from Excel. ‘Single entity’ dimension filters let you focus your budget on specific combinations (like Australian sales of air condistioners) without drilling through unnecessary levels. Smart filtering means when you select one dimension, other filters automatically show only relevant options instead supplying full lists.

Can’t wait to do it all again next year

We’re really excited to keep building on this momentum with you next year. In 2025 we also welcomed a new investor into our business, Accel-KKR with the aim of accelerating value to customers. We also want to provide more opportunities for customers to get hands-on with the new features so look out for the all in-person and online events. As always, if you have any ideas for the development team, please let us know. We look forward to helping you make the most of your ERP data in 2026 and reach your sales targets, demand plan more regularly or grow. The team at Phocas is ready for you.