Bringing Order to Chaos. That
was one of the themes expressed in this spring’s
"Office of Finance Best Practices Event" hosted
by Creative Computing, Inc. and Cognos, an IBM
company, at Kirkbrae Country Club in Lincoln
RI.
Companies like FGX (Foster Grant), Mass Housing,
Arbella Insurance, MetLife, and Athena Health
among others spent the morning listening to
presentations on how to leverage the Office
of Finance products from Cognos, an IBM Company,
to help create accurate, dynamic, forward-looking
plans for future growth and success.
The morning began with Joe Burton of Creative
Computing presenting a high level overview of
the value of Enterprise Planning, and some tips
on ensuring a successful implementation. Burton,
Creative Computing’s Office of Finance Practice
Manager, cautioned the group not to try to build
one massive enterprise wide plan as a first
project, but rather identify a couple “quick
wins” which would show immediate value and build
buy in for the larger implementation. “Don’t
try to eat the elephant. By dividing the project
into parts and delivering the less complex parts
first can help build user acceptance.” said
Burton.
Creative’s Mary Smith discussed the various
techniques to deliver robust reporting against
the Enterprise Planning (EP) environment. The
audience was pleased to hear that Smith had
successfully designed and built a flexible Data
Mart using data from multiple sources including
EP, in about a week. This mart became the foundation
upon which was built a series of cubes and reports
which enabled non-technical users to access
and explore EP data interactively. “Data Marts
are a great solution,” said Smith. “But they
may not be for everyone. If all you need is
data from a single EP model, building reports
directly against the Published Container with
Report Studio can be just as valuable.”
Fuel Cell Energy of Danbury, CT presented a
complex, comprehensive information environment
which they delivered in just a few months which
encompassed a vast cross section of Cognos technologies.
Rob Keefrider, Director of Finance and Information
Analytics for Fuel Cell, explained how with
just a couple month left in the fiscal year
he decided to “bite the bullet” and jump full
steam ahead into a major overhaul of their existing
forecasting and budgeting process, making Cognos
EP the new centerpiece technology for the entire
system. In spite of a series of challenges,
Keefrider’s team pulled it off, delivering incremental
pieces of the solution at critical times, and
allowing his team to get through the first budget
cycle by the skin of their teeth. “Looking back,”
Keefrider said, “we made the right call. If
we had waited till next fiscal year, we knew
the business would have that many more demands
on it. The company is growing rapidly now and
we’re stretching our resources to cover a great
deal of work already. Waiting would have been
a mistake.” In the end, Fuel Cell Energy overhauled
it entire Business Intelligence platform using
Cognos 8, implemented Enterprise Planning to
do Budgeting and Forecasting, as well as Cognos
Finance to deliver financial reporting.
With lunch being brought in, there was one session
left. The forward looking talk was both exciting
and possibly a little concerning to some in
the room. Joe Fitzpatrick and Atique Taluker
of Cognos presented and demonstrated TM1. This
multi-dimensional data base, which was developed
and well established by Applix before it was
acquired by Cognos last year, will form the
new underlying data source for the new Office
of Finance solution from Cognos. The process
will take many months, but the benefits will
be substantial. “TM1’s speed and read/write
capability along with its ability to handle
huge volumes of data make it a natural fit to
support a financial planning application,” said
Joe Fitzpatrick.
Looking ahead to the Fall, attendees suggested
a follow up presentation on TM1 and what the
product road map looks like as we move towards
complete convergence of the technologies. While
all attendees where at different point in their
journey towards creating Performance Management
companies, all felt they had some valuable takeaways
from the day. Many have set concrete next steps
to explore how these tools can help streamline,
simplify and accelerate their current planning
and budgeting processes.
###
Contact:
Creative Computing
Ken Gustin
ken.gustin@mycci.com
Office: (401)-727-2400
Fax: (401)-727-4998
Locations:
Creative Computing, Inc.
100 Middle Street
Lincoln, RI 02865
