Scalable Financial Reporting Solution for Healthcare Management
overview
The customer is a leading health management and diagnostic services and equipment company. As one of the leading construction multimedia companies, this customer is faced with the following challenges: inefficient central financial reports, reliance on manual inputs, and cumbersome Excel intensive reporting tool. With financial data coming from 8 different data sources, a central reporting tool to consolidate all the reports is needed. The business is presented in six platforms and each platform gets the data from its own data source.
challenges
The chart of accounts is compiled from a string with over 20 characters. The accounts dimension hierarchy was set up in such a way as to hinder reporting leading to miss interpretation of data and errors in reports. Each of the six platforms has their own chart of accounts and reporting method making it difficult to consolidate in a single tool. Therefore, a lot of manual methods are involved in creating reports. Heavy reliance on Microsoft Excel to input budgeting data is present. As a Solution, PREDICTif Solutions proposes an end to end solution to centralize the financial reporting system to provide budgeting and forecasting for the organization. The required capabilities for this project were:
- Financial consolidation and reporting
- Interactive analysis
- Forecasting and Budgeting
- Cognos TM1 Web
scope
- The objective of the project was to deliver a solution that leveraged TM1’s in-memory OLAP capabilities and simplified the monthly financial consolidation and reporting process.
- Centralized, efficient and ease of use access application which can reduce preparation time. Instead of spending time on preparing reports, users can now focus on analyzing data.
- Instill ‘one version of the truth’ consolidation reporting system that can be applied to six platforms
- Provide a proficient budgeting and forecasting web based process that allows users to input data at the line item level.
- Give ability to end users to build and analyze reports without reliance on IT or the Accounting department
solution
After evaluating several world class solutions, IBM Cognos TM1 was selected for a number of reasons – one of them being that IBM Cognos TM1 provides a real-time approach to consolidating, viewing, and editing enormous volumes of multidimensional data.
PREDICTif was engaged to provide an end-to-end solution delivering 25 Cubes with dimensions ranging from 5 to 15 in order to provide Financials and Assumptions models. Changes in financial forecasts, assumption metrics and indirect expenses were made via customizable Excel templates as well as directly through the TM1 interface. Reports created both in TM1 and Excel were readily accessible through the web with no additional effort.
- PREDICTif Solutions was able to create a set of multidimensional cubes utilizing OLAP technology that can dynamically slice and dice through data sources.
- Design a user-friendly excel input templates which can access through TM1 web. The cubes support consolidation and reporting of both budgeting and forecasting data as well as allocation.
- An automated data extraction using by TI processes (ETL) tool that can update multi dimensional cubes from 8 different data sources.
- Users can use dimension editor as primary method to maintain or update dimensions that are not from the source system
- Setting up different instances for security purposes and separate the finance consolidation modules, budgeting applications and compensation modules will be given access by corporate controller.
- Substantially reduce time spend on creating monthly financial reports. Reports are easily access and produce with little or no reliance on the accounting and IT department.
- Provide a real-time consolidation reports and offer an automated tool for producing annual budget and monthly forecast process.
- Eliminate manual effort and errors of gathering data from multiple reports, spreadsheet and data sources
- Provide power users training and knowledge transfer to the client so they will be able to build additional reports, budget templates and forecasting procedures out of the cubes.
results
PREDICTif Solutions delivered measurable results to the client. Now the client is able to provide “one version of the truth” in their reporting system. Customers can now use the centralized financial reporting cube to analyze data across six platforms and they now have an automated ETL process to update dimensions and cubes from 8 different data sources. The TM1 web based input budgeting and forecasting system also allows users across the enterprise system to input data at the line item level. The application significantly speeds up the budgeting and forecasting process and empowers users to create or modify input templates without IT department influence.
- With the deployment of the TM1 solution, the number of hours spent generating consolidated financial statements were reduced considerably, allowing more time for analysis;
- Multiple disparate business units were brought together under one streamlined reporting process with a standardized company-wide output;
- The finance group supported and upgraded the solution and the accompanying infrastructure through its own staff, without dependence on the IT support; and
- Consolidated financial reports have obtained further reach as a result of the use of TM1 web.