Freight One changes the budgeting automation system

The IT company completed the project of migration of a budgeting system in Freight One on the new modern IBM Cognos TM1 platform.

Task

Until recently process of formation and approval of the budget of PGK was performed using the IBM Cognos Planning software product of version 8.4. However it did not allow fully and in a short time to implement all business processes of budget planning taking into account an extensive network of branches and also by divisions. In particular, the main problem consisted in slow report generation and in insufficient depth the analyst. In this regard the management of PGK made the decision on migration of a budgeting system from the IBM Cognos Planning platform on IBM Cognos TM1 of version 9.5.2.

Main objective of the project - optimization of work with reports (increase in speed of difficult calculations and improvement of the mechanism of formation and approval of budgets) and also increase in scalability of a budgeting system. At the same time the functionality of a budgeting system should remain invariable.

Solution

The project started in March, 2011. As the existing budgeting model had to become a basis for a new budgeting model, works began with its analysis within all company, including a branch network.

On the basis of inspection of the current business processes and also recommendations about their improvement the reference model of budgeting was developed. Also this stage included training of staff of PGK which entered a project team.

The new budgeting system was unrolled on the server running MS Windows Server 2008 OS. Authentication and client access are implemented on the basis of the IBM Cognos TM1 platform integrated with a network folder based on Microsoft Active Directory. For the staff of branches terminal access to a system using the solution Citrix XenApp is organized.

Results

Now in a new system about 150 users – the staff of financial and economic departments of regional divisions and practically all staff of central office of the company work.

Migration on IBM Cognos TM1 allowed to achieve also other positive results: the quality of process management of budgeting increased, reliability and speed of formation of the basic managerial reports increased. Besides, a new system allowed to achieve bigger detailing of budgets, to perform daily monitoring of results of the actual accounting of execution of budgets, to react timely to the market situation and to hold competitive advantages.