1. Column5 Reference Library

2. Lionsgate Reduces Budget Time and Enhances Performance Reporting with SAP Planning and Consolidation
Challenges & Opportunities
Required a more sophisticated tool to help manage the challenge of complex planning and forecasting processes
Needed better access and visibility into dynamic company data for improved decision making
Objectives
Improve management of the “ultimate schedule” for production and distribution prevalent in media industry
Increase accuracy and visibility to company data
Provide an easy-to-learn and easy-to-use tool for staff
Implementation Highlights
User since 2000, version 4.2 with plan to upgrade to 5.2 (Q2’08) and then 7.1
Initial implementation complete in less than two weeks
Synchronize data and metadata with SAP ERP and BI/BW
Why SAP
Solution flexibility, power, and ease-of-use
Stability of platform and future direction of solution
Excel user interface allows new users to leverage application with little or no training
Upgrade plans are a result of successful implementation that has been widely accepted by accounting and planning departments
Benefits
Budgeting process shifted from basic tasks to value-enhancing activities
Significantly enhanced ability to analyze and forecast revenue and cost on individual titles from theater and DVD to iPod and television
Able to dynamically analyze plan vs forecast data to react to buyer response and better ensure expected revenue stream
Instant and accurate ad-hoc reporting on over 10,000 individual films
Lionsgate
Location: Santa Monica, California
Industry: Media
Products and Services: Producer and distributor of independent films, and producer of television programs
Revenue: $976 million
Employees: 400
Web Site:
SAP Solutions and Services: SAP Planning and Consolidation
Partner: Column5 Consulting
“Using SAP’s Planning and Consolidation, the budgeting process was reduced from weeks to days. We’ve also developed a richness in our performance reporting that has significantly enhanced our ability to predict revenue and therefore improve relationships with our distribution partners.”
Ulrik Knap
SVP, Planning and Analysis
Lionsgate 2

3. Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Leverages BPC 10
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Leverages BPC 10.0 to Streamline the Reporting and Planning Process
Challenges & Opportunities
Upgrade from BPC version 7.0 to BPC version 10.0 (Microsoft Platform)
Objectives
Technical Stability
Convert all Reports and Input Templates from EVDRE to the EPM Add-In
More efficient process to complete the Salary Planning
Migrate Template-based Logic to Business Rules and Logic
Streamline the Reporting and Planning Processes
Why Column5
Experience and Best Practices dating back to product inception
Full Services Firm - Technical Services, EPM Academy, Consulting / Advisory Services, Center of Excellence, Project Management Organization
Methodology and Knowledge Transfer from Day 1
Why SAP
Ease of use/Microsoft Office Suite, Microsoft Excel
Software’s ability to eliminate rekeying and reduce errors
Ability to access data from multiple sources/years within a centralized interface
Unified Platform provides expansion capabilities for future phases and business needs
Benefits
Foundation for more flexible Financial Reporting and Analysis
Single Version of the Truth
Integrated multiple sources
Automated interfaces
Reduces / Eliminates manual errors
Large Deployment (350) / User Friendly for variety of users
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center
Location: Cincinnati, OH
Industry: Healthcare
Products and Services: 557 bed pediatric hospital
Web Site:
SAP Solutions and Services: SAP Planning and Consolidation
Partner: Column5 Consulting
About CCHMC
3rd in the nation among all Honor Roll hospitals in the 2012 U.S. News & World Report survey of best children's hospitals
2nd highest recipient of grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for pediatric research
3rd best Department of Pediatrics at a US medical school, in U.S. News & World Report 2012 survey of best graduate schools 3

4. United Pipe and Supply improves performance management with SAP Planning and Consolidation
Challenges and Opportunities
Replace manual, time-consuming processes for planning, budgeting, and reporting
Gain control over accuracy and reliability of corporate data
Acquire ability to create reports and generate financial analyses
Objectives
Unify and centralize all performance and financial data
Automate reporting and analysis
Give managers control over performance drivers down to the branch level
Implementation Highlights
Focused on financial reporting and budgeting activities
Completed 3-phase implementation in 6 months
Why SAP
Single product that offers complete functionality
Ease of use and rapid adoption due to familiar Microsoft Excel interface
Simplified maintenance and administration
Benefits
Reliable source of corporate data
Automated report generation
Rapid adoption due to Excel- based interface
Greater control over performance drivers – which translate into higher employee accountability for performance
Enhanced collaboration via bottom-up and top-down budgeting processes
64% pretax rate of return in first 9 months – with a 15-month payback period
United Pipe & Supply
Name: United Pipe & Supply Co. Inc.
Location: Portland, Oregon
Industry: Wholesale distribution
Products and services: Pipe, drainage, rotors, valves, pumps, and heating, venting, and air-conditioning equipment
Revenue: Over US$200 million
Web site:
SAP Solution and services: SAP Planning and Consolidation application
Partner: Column5 Consulting
“We have better control of our information
and can harness it to make good business
decisions. Quite simply, SAP Planning and
Consolidation has greatly improved how
we manage performance at United Pipe &
Supply.”
Cheryl Summers Controller
United Pipe & Supply Co. Inc. 4

5. Orrick Sets the Foundation for more Flexible Reporting and Analysis
Challenges and Opportunities
Heavy use of VBA in reports resulted in high reliance on IT for report maintenance
Little to no ability to drill-down or across dimensions for further analysis
Objectives
Automate the reporting and planning processes
Empower the finance team to write the reports versus having IT support teams write reports
Improve the flow of data across Orrick’s data sources to allow for more frequent data refreshes in an automated fashion
Drive an increase in forecast accuracy
Allow Orrick to be self reliant in the support of BPC
Why SAP
Ease of use/Microsoft Office Suite, Microsoft Excel
Automated import/export interfaces to both internal and external data sources
Ability to access data from multiple sources/years within a centralized interface
Unified Platform provides expansion capabilities for future phases and business needs
Why Column5
Experience and Best Practices dating back to product inception
Full Services Firm - Technical Services., Training, Center of Excellence, Project Management, Advisory Services
Methodology and Knowledge Transfer from Day 1
Benefits
Quick time to value – less than 5 months to go-live
Reduced monthly reporting time by 60%
Ad hoc analytic capabilities
Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP
Location: San Francisco, CA
Industry: Professional Services
Products and Services: Legal Services
Employees: 1100+
Web Site:
SAP Solutions and Services: SAP Planning and Consolidation
Partner: Column5 Consulting
Orrick is a leading global law firm with a particular focus on serving companies in the technology, energy and financial sectors. We are recognized worldwide for delivering the highest-quality, commercial-orientated legal advice and for our culture of innovation and collaboration.

6. IATA: Flying to New Heights of Reliable, Streamlined Financial Reporting
Challenges and Opportunities
IATA's budgeting, forecasting and consolidation requirements are extensive. IATA staff must develop annual budgets and monthly forecasts for 650 profit centers.
Consolidation reporting is conducted globally by five regional hubs that consolidate financial data from 135 separate internal organizations.
Objectives
Implement a more efficient process for creating budgets, forecasts and consolidated reports to accelerate timelines and streamline validation
Ability to drill-down to transaction details
Implementation Highlights
Involvement of key business process owners throughout the build facilitated learning and lead to lower training costs and increased user adoption
600 global users
Why SAP
Integration with existing SAP landscape at IATA.
Modeling capabilities of BPC
Ease of use of the Office interface with BPC
Why Column5
Knowledge of EPM solutions
Flexibility and professionalism exhibited throughout sales and implementation cycles
Benefits
Drill-though to transaction detail has enabled a significant simplification of the review process.
Business users now enjoy unprecedented flexibility with BPC as they can track budgets and expenditures across multiple dimensions.
Streamlined monthly consolidation reporting.
International Air Transport Association
Location: San Jose, California
Industry: Transportation and Logistics - Airlines
Products and Services: Global trade organization representing, leading and server the air transport industry
Members: ~240 airlines
Web Site:
SAP Solutions and Services: SAP Planning and Consolidation
Partner: Column5 Consulting
“Our business users are having a great time visualizing performance metrics in SAP Dashboard Design software using data pulled from SAP Business Planning and Consolidation.”
Tim Grosser
Head of SAP Business Systems
IATA

10. Allergan Delivers More Detailed Financial Reports to Executives — and Does It Faster
Challenges and Opportunities
Delays in the financial close process were frustrating to finance department and the executives waiting for the ‘numbers’
A major Acquisition highlighted the fact that the time had come to evolve from manual processes
Objectives
Faster Close Process
More update data throughout the month
Ability to load planning data
More self-sufficient users running their own reports
Implementation Highlights
Improved analysis with more detailed and transparent data
Enhanced ability to balance intercompany transactions
Improved reporting: “Excel on steroids”
Decentralized reporting process from 1 report writer to hundreds
Why SAP
What were the compelling reasons for selecting SAP? Examples include clarity of platform/product direction, competitive evaluation vs. Oracle or other competitors, previous successful SAP implementations, industry focus, industry/solution references, partner network, etc.
Benefits
35% reduction in financial close cycle times
Easier, faster, and less manual effort for remote sites to submit data
Faster and more automated data loads
Load times reduced from 1–2 hours to under 15 minutes
Allergan
Location: Irvine, California
Industry: Healthcare products
Products and Services: eye care, neuroscience, obesity management, medical aesthetics, dermatology, and urology
Revenue: $5.4b
Employees: 11000
Web Site:
SAP Solutions and Services: SAP NetWeaver BW. SAP Planning and Consolidation
Partner: Column5 Consulting
“After a major acquisition — when we had to integrate many different types of high-level financial data — it became clear how manual our processes were and that it was time for a change.”
Elizabeth Elmore
Director of Corporate Financial
and Management Reporting Systems
Allergan

11. Northern California Public Broadcasting – Creating a performance-based culture
Challenges and Opportunities
5 month Planning Cycle consumed management and staff
600 Excel spreadsheets, from nearly 200 business units, were used to prepare budgets
Consolidation took approximately 6 weeks and included painstaking manual intercompany balancing
Objectives
To minimize cycle time and effort involved in developing, reviewing and approving “budgets” – reduced to one hour of analysis and update each month.
To provide managers with a consistent, accessible tool to communicate plan changes from the bottom up, so that an accurate picture could be seen.
Implementation Highlights
Automated balancing of interdepartmental charges
Minimized staff resources for implementation
Aggregated data across axes of department as well as projects
Why SAP
Ability to budget multiple line items for individual accounts
Ability to add comments by line item to document assumptions
Good negotiating partner on terms and conditions
Benefits
Payback within three months, due to ability to react to market, cutting costs and generating more revenue ahead of downturn
Consolidation cycle time reduced from 6 weeks to a few seconds
Kept spreadsheet front end, but locked and controlled to maintain integrity of data input template/process
Payroll forecast accuracy was increased, to within 0.1%
NCPB
Location: San Francisco, California
Industry: Entertainment and Media
Revenue: $60m
Employees: 275
Web Site: /
SAP Solutions and Services: SAP Planning and Consolidation
Partner: Column5 Consulting
“[With SAP BPC] we’ve cut many weeks off our budgeting and forecasting process, providing important time for value-added analysis. I would estimate the software
provided a four-fold ROI.”
Jeff Nemy
Chief Financial Officer
NCPB

12. G4S- Making Business Processes Work Smarter with BPC
Challenges and Opportunities
Manual keying in of financial data from multiple spreadsheets into account system was labor intensive and time consuming.
If changes were required it would take weeks to complete the revised numbers
Objectives
Increase the ability to produce forecasts more quickly
Increase the data transparency and minimize risk of errors
Driver-based modeling
Implementation Highlights
Driver-based demonstration module was developed in 4 weeks
Reducing manual entries to 12 from 400
Why SAP
Users of OutlookSoft since 2007
Strong consulting partner in Column5
Benefits
BPC has greatly reduced the number of manual calculations numbering in the 1000’s across the organization.
An application for the meter -reading function for example, replicates the results that would previously have come from analyzing spreadsheets containing thousands of calculations, and can produce revenue, headcount requirements, even standard cost per person. This allows G4S Utility Services to interrogate present data, look at the implications of contract or cost changes across the business, and identify areas of risk or opportunity.
G4S
Location: Surrey, United Kingdom
Industry: Security, facilities management, utility services
Revenue: £6bn Worldwide, £1bn UK &Ireland
Employees: 600,000 WW, 33,000 UK & Ireland
Web Site:
SAP Solutions and Services: SAP Planning and Consolidation
Partner: Column5 Consulting
“New opportunities are discovered across the division, every month”
Andrew Bush
Regional BPC Development Manager
G4S

13. Altera Standardizes on SAP to Run Better
Challenges and Opportunities
Altera's performance management landscape was a hodgepodge of systems – BAAN (ERP), Panorama (BI),Oracle-Hyperion and manual Excel resulting in inefficient processes and a lack of visibility to take action in a timely manner.
Objectives
Lower TCO by standardizing on one platform for ERP, EPM and BI. Altera standardized disparate systems on SAP.
Faster and more informed decision making.
Implementation Highlights
BPC implementation became Altera's single version of the truth for actual and plan data.
Leveraging BPC for Consolidations, Financial, Sales, Opex, Capex , HR planning
Why SAP
Built on SAP’s Netweaver platform leveraging existing Assets
Drill thru into BW & ECC allowing rigorous analytics capability
Ability to handle Consolidations, Planning and Reporting within BW as a single unified solution
Powerful logic engine and options for deploying F/X Conversions, Business Rules, Allocations and Calculations logic
Leverage native Finance and IT skill set centered around SAP solutions
Integration between strategic, financial, capital, operational and resource planning
Benefits
Real-time access to data
Increased business ownership
Automation of Consolidations and Integrated to ECC
Moved Planning from de-centralized Excel files to centralized planning system
Altera
Location: San Jose, California
Industry: Semiconductor Manufacturing
Products and Services: Semiconductors and integrated circuits
Revenue: $2b
Employees: 2900
Web Site:
SAP Solutions and Services: SAP Planning and Consolidation
Partner: Column5 Consulting
CURRENT BPC USES:
Annual Plan, Monthly/ Quarterly Forecasts, and Interim Plans
Consolidated Month-end Results
Complex Allocations
Commercial P&L
Plan and Forecasted:
Income Statement
Balance Sheet
Cash Conversion Cycle Metrics
HR Workforce Plans
Capital Spend and Depreciation Plan
Other outputs

14. Northern Arizona University – Raising the Grade for Budgeting
Challenges and Opportunities
Complex, error prone budget and close cycles.
Strict process for tracking how grant money is spent and transferred
Objectives
Unify performance data to more effectively plan, analyze and report budget data
Provide budget managers an accurate, up-to-date view of their financial position
Implementation Highlights
NAU was able improve and refine their business processes
Rolled out to 170 campus budget managers
Training of end-users and administrators were key to a successful implementation
Why SAP
Familiarity with SAP’s products already in production at NAU
Ease of use and low learning curve with BPC’s Excel front-end
Ability to load data from multiple sources
Benefits
50% reduction in budget preparation time. From 3 months to 6 weeks.
More timely budget data due to reduction in cycle
Ability to quickly make adjustments and see the impact immediately. No more manual adjustments and updating of multiple spreadsheets
75% reduction time to create of state mandated financial reports. 2 months to 2 weeks.
Northern Arizona University
Location: Flagstaff, Arizona
Industry: Higher Education and Research
Products and Services: undergraduate and graduate education, professional programs and research
Faculty & Staff: 3,800
Students: 17,000
Web Site:
SAP Solutions and Services: SAP Planning and Consolidation
Partner: Column5 Consulting
“With SAP Planning and Consolidation, we now have access to consistent, accurate, and reliable information – and that means more robust management of our educational resources.”
Bjorn Flugstad
Budget Director
Northern Arizona University

15. Revolutionizing Budgeting and Planning with SAP Software
Challenges and Opportunities
Version control was a constant issue. There were multiple versions of the truth.
Maintaining ESSBASE was very painful Integration of ESSBASE and PeopleSoft for both IT and Finance was time consuming.
The business users wanted more control over the planning processes
Objectives
Reduce the total planning process cycle to allow for increased frequency (of forecasting for the calendar year
Provide a user friendly interface to gather plan data while maintaining consistency in the planning templates across the organization
Ensure data integrity and accuracy by reducing human errors throughout the entire process
Implementation Highlights
All Daily, Periodic, Quarterly and Annual Reporting requirements now leverage BPC as single data source
Expansions have cut down time required to “update” static P&L’s for changes within the account and entity hierarchy
Franchise Sales Reporting has been consolidated from 6 independent applications to 1
Why SAP
Impressive customer references
Software ease of use
Support for business process flows
Ability to run the application on a
Microsoft technology platform.
Benefits
Consolidate company-wide data within hours
Reduce the budget cycle by one-third
Manipulate and segment data in numerous ways
Meet financial planning deadlines by
completing consolidated financial reports in a short period of time
CKE Restaurants, Inc
Location: Anaheim California
Industry: Restaurants, Food Services
Products and Services: Fast food and Quick service restaurants (Carls JR, Hardees)
Revenue: $1.2b
Employees: 2000
Web Site:
SAP Solutions and Services: SAP Planning and Consolidation
Partner: Column5 Consulting
“The SAP application allows us to respond as needed to a changing economy and business environment.”
Ryan Hanawalt Manager of Finance
CKE Restaurants Inc.

16. Discovery Communications Centralizes Processes for Reporting and Analysis
Challenges and Opportunities
Reporting process involved disparate sources and technologies, plus manual manipulation
Finance and Accounting time was spent collecting, consolidating, and reconciling data rather than analyzing it
Manual processes susceptible to errors
Data in separate systems with varying dimensions and difficulty consolidating to one version of the truth
Difficulty reporting on intercompany versus intracompany eliminations, and analysis by brand, geography, etc
Objectives
Improved business insight through multidimensional analysis
Self-service reporting
Lower TCO by standardizing on SAP
Why SAP
Single solution that could handle multiple EPM processes like reporting and forecasting
Already using SAP ERP and BW and looking for tight integration
Why Column5
Company management and field staff have long experience with the SAP BPC product
Solid customer references
Believed Column5 could help Discovery maximize the value of its investment
Benefits
Centralized management information, creating confidence in accuracy and reliability of the data
Enabled meeting reporting needs of becoming a public company
Less time spent by resources on data collection and collation
Streamlined the month-end reporting process, as well as forecast collection and analysis
Discovery Communications
Location: Silver Springs, MD
Industry: Entertainment & Media
Products and Services: TV program production and distribution
Revenue: $4b
Employees: 4600
Web Site:
SAP Solutions and Services: SAP Planning and Consolidation
Partner: Column5 Consulting
“The successful implementation of SAP BPC as a reporting tool has been instrumental in significantly enhancing Discovery’s ability to analyze and report on the performance of its business units in an efficient manner.”
Simon Robinson Senior VP Corporate Financial Planning & Analysis

17. Pilgrim’s Pride – Fast and Flexible Planning and Forecasting
Challenges and Opportunities
Replace an outdated reporting system based on hundreds of spreadsheets and legacy software
Implement a planning and forecasting process that would allow what-if scenarios and ongoing adjustments as needed
Objectives
Faster and less labor-intensive closing cycles
Centralized enterprise data that provides transparency to management and investors, and reduces auditing costs
Improve efficiency of planning, forecasting, and consolidation processes
Implementation Highlights
PPC is now able to do what-if scenarios in realtime. Both top-down and bottoms-up adjustments can be made, and the impacts seen within a matter of minutes, not weeks.
The end result: a business that can adapt to changing conditions in markets and the economy, to ensure ongoing profitability.
Why SAP
Ability to quickly consolidate and report on results
Familiar Excel interface and integration with MS Office
Powerful but easy-to-use multi-dimensional analytics to give insight into the business
Why Column5
Depth and breadth of experience with SAP BPC
Ability to understand business requirements and develop a financial application that supports the objectives of the business
Reputation and proven track record with customers across industries
Benefits
Ability to plan at a level of detail that gives visibility into the effect of business drivers on financial results
Ability to re-forecast as needed to adapt to changing market conditions
Pilgrim’s Pride
Location: Pittsburg, Texas
Industry: Food Production & Distribution
Revenue: $7.5b
Employees: 39,500
Web Site:
SAP Solutions and Services: SAP Planning and Consolidation
Partner: Column5 Consulting
Pilgrim’s Pride Corporation is one of the largest chicken companies in the United States and Mexico. A Fortune
500 company, PPC operates 31 chicken processing plants and 8 prepared-foods plants. Twenty-nine feed mills, 39 hatcheries and about 5,000 poultry growers support these
plants.

18. The Show Must Go On – Live Nation uses BPC to keep Its Finger on the Pulse of the Business
Challenges and Opportunities
Large data volumes
Fluid, constantly changing
organization
Support for worldwide operations
Stringent requirements for performance and up-time
Auditing and SOX compliance.
Objectives
Support for audit and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance requirements
Enhance visibility to better ensure expected revenue streams
Rolling forecasts can be produced using the latest actual data
Implementation Highlights
Integration to Oracle Financials
Built applications for: Finance (GL), HR (Payroll), CAPEX (capitol projects), Event (Show by Show), Sponsorship (Alliances)
Why SAP
Advanced, easy to use analytic capabilities
Ad hoc development of reports
Excel interface and MS Office integration
Expandability and scalability
Adaptability to constant change
Why Column5
Confidence: The depth of experience of the Column 5 team members and the company as a whole gave Live Nation a high confidence level
Reputation: Live Nation knew of Column 5’s reputation for quality work
Benefits
Faster closing times allow for greater market agility
Ease of analysis allows managers to find the data and comparisons they need quickly
Managers are now able to do analysis on a daily basis
Live Nation
Location: Los Angeles, California
Industry: Entertainment
Products and Services: Producer of live concerts
Revenue: $5.3b
Employees: 6600
Web Site:
SAP Solutions and Services: SAP Planning and Consolidation
Partner: Column5 Consulting
“SAP BPC is a very dynamic tool and allows the data to be cut in multiple ways, which is great advantage over systems which have only canned reports. So you can find what you
need in 5 minutes by building one report rather than running 20 canned reports.”
SVP Finance / International Music, Live Nation

19. Warehouse Giant Hisco Inc
Warehouse Giant Hisco Inc. Expands Productivity Through SAP Planning Services
Challenges and Opportunities
Manual Excel-based operational reporting process
Limited security, flexibility, and scalability
Non-standardized application of key performance indicators (KPI’s) by the field
Large volume of spreadsheets and data sources
Limited visibility and flexibility in reporting.
Objectives
Reduce the time required for reporting and analysis
Create a unified database with detailed sales data and standardized metrics
Reduce the level of effort required to produce reports and scorecards
Why SAP
Easy to use Excel interface
Centralized database
Strong reporting and analytical capabilities
Why Column5
Proven expertise in SAP BPC
Local presence
Solid, enthusiastic references
Benefits
Reduced number of spreadsheets that had to be maintained
Reduced number of points of failure; increased accuracy and reliability
Improved visibility into financial and operational performance
Enhanced analytical value of financial data
Increased satisfaction of senior management
Hicso Inc.
Location: Houston, Texas
Industry: Distribution and Warehousing
Revenue: $200M
Employees: 300
Web Site:
SAP Solutions and Services: SAP Planning and Consolidation
Partner: Column5 Consulting
SAP BPC enabled HISCO to automate their financial reporting processes, which not only saves them time and
effort, it gives them confidence in the reliability of the data, and the ability to see and understand what is going on in the business in a timely fashion.

20. Consolidation that supports the strategic vision
Challenges and Opportunities
Eight different underlying systems were in place as a result of rapid growth organically and through acquisition.
Finance struggled to pull together data in a timely fashion as they manually consolidated groups of spreadsheets to come up with a single, accurate set of reports.
Objectives
Reduce the amount of time spent on consolidating and validating data and more time providing insight
Review and improve processes rather than replicate and automating as is processes
Implementation Highlights
Created a reporting platform that can grow with the business.
Financial information is available 2 days earlier with much less risk associated with it.
Why SAP
BPC met the immediate need for a consolidation and reporting application NG Bailey was impressed with the potential for other uses such as CRM and Customer analytics
Why Column5
Rather than just asking us “what do you want?” column5 helped us get the answers we needed, based on their experience with the product, and not answers imposed by it.‟
Benefits
No additional finance staff needed despite rapid growth and complexity of consolidation process. In fact, NG Bailey was able to redeploy a member of the finance team elsewhere within the business, leading to a real cost saving.
Speed at which data can now be accessed has lead to timely decision-making.
NG Bailey
Location: Ilkley, West Yorkshire, UK
Industry: Building systems and services
Revenue: £600m
Employees: 4000
Web Site:
SAP Solutions and Services: SAP Planning and Consolidation
Partner: Column5 Consulting
“Rather than spending the majority of time checking that numbers add up and are consistent, there is now time to look more deeply at why the numbers are changing and what they say about the direction of the business.”
Ian Park
Project Manager
NG Bailey

21. Automated Management Reporting, Detailed Budgeting & Forecasting
Challenges and Opportunities
Management received reports only once a year
Data from many sources had to be re-keyed to MS Excel
The budget process consisted of ed spreadsheets
Objectives
Ability to drill down through financial information at all levels
More time available for analyzing the data and explaining variances
Improve internal customers’ satisfaction level
Improve senior management’s satisfaction level
Implementation Highlights
Achieved rapid implementation via clearly defined requirements and keeping to defined scope
Started with OutlookSoft 4.1 and upgraded to SAP BPC 7.0
Why SAP
Excel interface for usability and high user acceptance
Easy consolidation of the data
MS SQL back end which matched in house expertise
Drill through functionality
Unified platform: buying one solution could meet all needs
Long time experience with OutlookSoft and SAP BPC
Rapid implementation methodology
Expertise in process improvement and optimization
Benefits
Improved reporting: key reports are done monthly, not quarterly
Increased accuracy: “BPC is Right”
Ability to drill down through financial information at all levels
Shortened the planning/reporting cycle time
Increased data visibility and reliability
Southwest Securities
Location: Dallas, Texas
Industry: Banking, Securities
Revenue: $478M/$11B in assets
Employees: 1200+
Web Site:
SAP Solutions and Services: SAP Planning and Consolidation
Partner: Column5 Consulting
Southwest Securities had an inflexible financial reporting and planning process that required rekeying of data into Excel, with management receiving a new reporting package just once a year. Now with SAP Planning & Consolidation, management gets monthly reports and can accurately
forecast the business.

22. Qwest Communications – Driver-Based Planning with BPC
Challenges and Opportunities
Budgeting was being done using a home-grown Excel tool that relied heavily on macros and Excel-based calculations
With no centralized database, the system was difficult to maintain and control, with limited visibility into how numbers were derived
Traditional budgeting approach did not focus the company on how key business indicators drive the budget
Objectives
Gain understanding of what levers need to pulled to impact the business – i.e. the business drivers
Automate the process of budgeting and forecasting, reducing the cycle time for these tasks and improving business agility
Implementation Highlights
Built a multi-dimensional model to allow planning by product line, sales channel, region, etc.
Changed internal processes and measurements to support the new way of thinking
Why SAP
Centralized database functionality
Excel interface provided by SAP Planning and Consolidation
Support for business rules/logic based approach .
Why Column5
Industry leading implementation partner within SAP toolset
Depth of knowledge, thanks to a mix of Finance and IT professionals
Sufficient staff to scale up to meet the needs of a large project
Professional management capability for a large scale implementation, including process, procedures, and risk reduction
Benefits
Provided a fully integrated model that allowed managers to see the full impact of a driver change on the bottom line
Developed driver trees that show how input-level drivers impact higher level calculated and aspirational drivers .
Qwest Communications
Location: Denver, Colorado
Industry: Telecommunications
Revenue: $13.4b
Employees: 31,000
Web Site:
SAP Solutions and Services: SAP Planning and Consolidation
Partner: Column5 Consulting
“Having SAP BPC as an enterprise planning platform has given us the ability to develop budgets that actually
drive us towards fulfilling on our strategic objectives.”
Sandy Rogers Director of Financial Systems,
Qwest Communications