Column5 Reference Library
Lionsgate Reduces Budget Time and Enhances
Performance Reporting with SAP Planning and
Consolidation
QUICK FACTS
Lionsgate

Location: Santa Monica, California

Industry: Media

Products and Services: Producer and
distributor of independent films, and
producer of television programs
Challenges & Opportunities
Why SAP



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

Revenue: $976 million

Employees: 400
Objectives

Web Site: www.lionsgate.com


SAP Solutions and Services: SAP
Planning and Consolidation

Partner: Column5 Consulting


“Using SAP’s Planning and Consolidation,
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-touse tool for staff
the budgeting process was reduced from
Implementation Highlights
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

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



Solution flexibility, power, and ease-ofuse
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
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Leverages BPC 10.0 to
Streamline the Reporting and Planning Process
QUICK FACTS
Challenges & Opportunities
Why SAP
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center
 Upgrade from BPC version 7.0 to BPC
version 10.0 (Microsoft Platform)


Location: Cincinnati, OH

Industry: Healthcare

Products and Services: 557 bed pediatric
hospital

Web Site: www.cinicinnatichildrens.org

SAP Solutions and Services: SAP Planning
and Consolidation

Partner: Column5 Consulting

Objectives






Technical Stability
Convert all Reports and Input
Templates from EVDRE to the EPM
 Unified Platform provides expansion
Add-In
capabilities for future phases and
More efficient process to complete the
business needs
Salary Planning
Benefits
Migrate Template-based Logic to
Business Rules and Logic
 Foundation for more flexible Financial
Reporting and Analysis
Streamline the Reporting and Planning
Processes
 Single Version of the Truth
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
Why Column5



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
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




Integrated multiple sources
Automated interfaces
Reduces / Eliminates manual errors
Large Deployment (350) / User
Friendly for variety of users
United Pipe and Supply improves performance
management with SAP Planning and Consolidation
QUICK FACTS
United Pipe & Supply
Challenges and Opportunities
Why SAP


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

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: www.unitedpipe.com
Objectives

SAP Solution and services: SAP Planning
and Consolidation application




Partner: Column5 Consulting
Unify and centralize all performance
and financial data

Automate reporting and analysis
Give managers control over
performance drivers down to the
branch level

“We have better control of our information
decisions. Quite simply, SAP Planning and
Implementation Highlights

Focused on financial reporting and
budgeting activities

Completed 3-phase implementation
in 6 months
Consolidation has greatly improved how
we manage performance at United Pipe &
Supply.”
Cheryl Summers
Controller
United Pipe & Supply Co. Inc.

Benefits

and can harness it to make good business

Single product that offers
complete functionality
Ease of use and rapid adoption due to
familiar Microsoft Excel interface
Simplified maintenance
and administration



Reliable source of corporate data
Automated report generation
Rapid adoption due to Excelbased 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
Orrick Sets the Foundation for more Flexible
Reporting and Analysis
QUICK FACTS
Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP

Location: San Francisco, CA

Industry: Professional Services

Products and Services: Legal Services

Employees: 1100+

Web Site: www.orrick.com

SAP Solutions and Services: SAP Planning
and Consolidation

Challenges and Opportunities
Why SAP






particular focus on serving companies in
the technology, energy and financial
sectors. We are recognized worldwide for
delivering the highest-quality, commercialorientated legal advice and for our culture
of innovation and collaboration.


Objectives
Partner: Column5 Consulting
Orrick is a leading global law firm with a
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


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
Automate the reporting and planning
 Unified Platform provides expansion
processes
capabilities for future phases and
business needs
Empower the finance team to write the
reports versus having IT support teams
Why Column5
write reports
Improve the flow of data across Orrick’s  Experience and Best Practices dating
data sources to allow for more frequent
back to product inception
data refreshes in an automated fashion  Full Services Firm - Technical
Drive an increase in forecast accuracy
Services., Training, Center of
Excellence, Project Management,
Allow Orrick to be self reliant in the
Advisory Services
support of BPC
 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
IATA: Flying to New Heights of Reliable,
Streamlined Financial Reporting
QUICK FACTS
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: www.iata.org

SAP Solutions and Services: SAP Planning
and Consolidation

Partner: Column5 Consulting
“Our business users are having a great
Challenges and Opportunities
Why SAP



data pulled from SAP Business Planning
and Consolidation.”



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
Knowledge of EPM solutions
Flexibility and professionalism
exhibited throughout sales and
implementation cycles
Benefits


Integration with existing SAP
landscape at IATA.
Modeling capabilities of BPC
Ease of use of the Office interface with
BPC
Why Column5
Objectives
Tim Grosser
Head of SAP Business Systems
IATA


time visualizing performance metrics in
SAP Dashboard Design software using
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.

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.
QUICK FACTS
QUICK FACTS
QUICK FACTS
Allergan Delivers More Detailed Financial
Reports to Executives — and Does It Faster
QUICK FACTS
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: www.allergan.com

SAP Solutions and Services: SAP
NetWeaver BW. SAP Planning and
Consolidation

Partner: Column5 Consulting
Challenges and Opportunities
Why SAP



Elizabeth Elmore
Director of Corporate Financial
and Management Reporting Systems
Allergan
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.
Objectives
Benefits





“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.”
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
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
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
Northern California Public Broadcasting –
Creating a performance-based culture
QUICK FACTS
NCPB
 Location: San Francisco, California
 Industry: Entertainment and Media
Challenges and Opportunities
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

 Revenue: $60m
 Employees: 275
 Web Site: www.ncpb.com / www.kqed.org

 SAP Solutions and Services: SAP Planning
and Consolidation
 Partner: Column5 Consulting
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

“[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
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
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,  Kept spreadsheet front end, but locked
accessible tool to communicate plan
and controlled to maintain integrity of
changes from the bottom up, so that an
data input template/process
accurate picture could be seen.
 Payroll forecast accuracy was
increased, to within 0.1%
Implementation Highlights

Automated balancing of
interdepartmental charges

Minimized staff resources for
implementation
Aggregated data across axes of
department as well as projects

G4S- Making Business Processes Work
Smarter with BPC
QUICK FACTS
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: www.g4s.com
 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
Challenges and Opportunities
Why SAP
Manual keying in of financial data from  Users of OutlookSoft since 2007
multiple spreadsheets into account
 Strong consulting partner in Column5
system was labor intensive and time
consuming.
 If changes were required it would take
Benefits
weeks to complete the revised numbers
 BPC has greatly reduced the number
of manual calculations numbering in
Objectives
the 1000’s across the organization.
 Increase the ability to produce
 An application for the meter -reading
forecasts more quickly
function for example, replicates the
 Increase the data transparency and
results that would previously have
minimize risk of errors
come from analyzing spreadsheets
 Driver-based modeling
containing thousands of calculations,
and can produce revenue, headcount
requirements, even standard cost per
Implementation Highlights
person. This allows G4S Utility
 Driver-based demonstration module
Services to interrogate present data,
was developed in 4 weeks
look at the implications of contract or
 Reducing manual entries to 12 from
cost changes across the business, and
400
identify areas of risk or opportunity.

Altera Standardizes on SAP to Run Better
QUICK FACTS
Altera
Challenges and Opportunities

 Location: San Jose, California
 Industry: Semiconductor Manufacturing
 Products and Services: Semiconductors
and integrated circuits
 Revenue: $2b
 Employees: 2900
 Web Site: www.altera.com
 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
Altera's performance management
 Built on SAP’s Netweaver platform
landscape was a hodgepodge of
leveraging existing Assets
systems – BAAN (ERP), Panorama
 Drill thru into BW & ECC allowing
(BI),Oracle-Hyperion and manual Excel
rigorous analytics capability
resulting in inefficient processes and a
 Ability to handle Consolidations,
lack of visibility to take action in a timely
Planning and Reporting within BW as a
manner.
single unified solution
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


Why SAP
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
 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
Northern Arizona University – Raising the
Grade for Budgeting
QUICK FACTS
Northern Arizona University
 Location: Flagstaff, Arizona
 Industry: Higher Education and Research
Challenges and Opportunities
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

Complex, error prone budget and close
cycles.
Strict process for tracking how grant
money is spent and transferred
 Products and Services: undergraduate and
graduate education, professional programs
and research
Objectives
 Faculty & Staff: 3,800

 Students: 17,000
 Web Site: www.nau.edu
 SAP Solutions and Services: SAP Planning
and Consolidation

 Partner: Column5 Consulting
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
“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



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
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.
Revolutionizing Budgeting and Planning with
SAP Software
QUICK FACTS
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: www.ckr.com

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.
Challenges and Opportunities
Implementation Highlights

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.

All Daily, Periodic, Quarterly and
Annual Reporting requirements now
leverage BPC as single data source

The business users wanted more
control over the planning processes

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


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
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
Discovery Communications Centralizes
Processes for Reporting and Analysis
QUICK FACTS
Discovery Communications

Location: Silver Springs, MD

Industry: Entertainment & Media

Products and Services: TV program
production and distribution

Revenue: $4b

Employees: 4600

Web Site: www.corporate.discovery.com

SAP Solutions and Services: SAP Planning
and Consolidation

Partner: Column5 Consulting
“The successful implementation of
Challenges and Opportunities
Why SAP

Reporting process involved disparate
 Single solution that could handle
sources and technologies, plus manual
multiple EPM processes like reporting
manipulation
and forecasting
 Finance and Accounting time was
 Already using SAP ERP and BW and
spent collecting, consolidating, and
looking for tight integration
reconciling data rather than analyzing it
 Manual processes susceptible to errors Why Column5
 Company management and field staff
 Data in separate systems with varying
have long experience with the SAP
dimensions and difficulty consolidating
BPC product
to one version of the truth
 Solid customer references
 Difficulty reporting on intercompany
versus intracompany eliminations, and  Believed Column5 could help
analysis by brand, geography, etc
Discovery maximize the value of its
investment
Objectives

SAP BPC as a reporting tool has been
instrumental in significantly enhancing

Discovery’s ability to analyze and

Improved business insight through
multidimensional analysis
Self-service reporting
Lower TCO by standardizing on SAP
Benefits


report on the performance of its
business units in an efficient manner.”

Simon Robinson

Senior VP
Corporate Financial Planning & Analysis
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
Pilgrim’s Pride – Fast and Flexible Planning
and Forecasting
QUICK FACTS
Challenges and Opportunities

Pilgrim’s Pride
 Location: Pittsburg, Texas
 Industry: Food Production & Distribution

 Revenue: $7.5b
 Employees: 39,500
 Web Site: www.pilgrimspride.com
 SAP Solutions and Services: SAP Planning
and Consolidation
Objectives

 Partner: Column5 Consulting


Pilgrim’s Pride Corporation is one of

United States and Mexico. A Fortune
chicken processing plants and 8
prepared-foods plants. Twenty-nine
feed mills, 39 hatcheries and about
5,000 poultry growers support these
plants.
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
the largest chicken companies in the
500 company, PPC operates 31
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

Why SAP
 Ability to quickly consolidate and report on
results
 Familiar Excel interface and integration
with MS Office
 Powerful but easy-to-use multidimensional 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
PPC is now able to do what-if scenarios in
Benefits
realtime. Both top-down and bottoms-up
adjustments can be made, and the impacts  Ability to plan at a level of detail that gives
seen within a matter of minutes, not weeks.
visibility into the effect of business drivers
The end result: a business that can adapt
on financial results
to changing conditions in markets and the
 Ability to re-forecast as needed to adapt to
economy, to ensure ongoing profitability.
changing market conditions
The Show Must Go On – Live Nation uses BPC
to keep Its Finger on the Pulse of the Business
QUICK FACTS
Live Nation
Challenges and Opportunities
Why SAP

Large data volumes
Fluid, constantly changing
organization
Support for worldwide operations
Stringent requirements for performance
and up-time
 Advanced, easy to use analytic
capabilities
 Ad hoc development of reports
 Excel interface and MS Office
integration
 Expandability and scalability
Auditing and SOX compliance.
 Adaptability to constant change
 Location: Los Angeles, California

 Industry: Entertainment

 Products and Services: Producer of live
concerts

 Revenue: $5.3b
 Employees: 6600
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 Web Site: www.livenation.com
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 SAP Solutions and Services: SAP Planning
and Consolidation
Objectives
 Partner: Column5 Consulting
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“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
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
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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
Integration to Oracle Financials
market agility
Built applications for: Finance (GL), HR
 Ease of analysis allows managers to
(Payroll), CAPEX (capitol projects),
find the data and comparisons they
Event (Show by Show), Sponsorship
need quickly
(Alliances)
 Managers are now able to do analysis
on a daily basis
Warehouse Giant Hisco Inc. Expands
Productivity Through SAP Planning Services
QUICK FACTS
Hicso Inc.
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Location: Houston, Texas
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Industry: Distribution and Warehousing

Revenue: $200M
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Employees: 300
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Web Site: www.hiscoinc.com

SAP Solutions and Services: SAP Planning
and Consolidation

Challenges and Opportunities
Why SAP

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Partner: Column5 Consulting

Manual Excel-based operational
reporting process
Limited security, flexibility, and
scalability
Non-standardized application of key
performance indicators (KPI’s) by the
field

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
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.


Why Column5
 Proven expertise in SAP BPC
Large volume of spreadsheets and data  Local presence
sources
 Solid, enthusiastic references
Limited visibility and flexibility in
reporting.
Benefits
Objectives
SAP BPC enabled HISCO to automate

Easy to use Excel interface
Centralized database
Strong reporting and analytical
capabilities
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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
Consolidation that supports the strategic
vision
QUICK FACTS
NG Bailey
 Location: Ilkley, West Yorkshire, UK
 Industry: Building systems and services
 Revenue: £600m
 Employees: 4000
 Web Site: www.ngbailey.com
 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
Challenges and Opportunities
Why SAP
Eight different underlying systems were  BPC met the immediate need for a
in place as a result of rapid growth
consolidation and reporting application
organically and through acquisition.
NG Bailey was impressed with the
potential for other uses such as CRM
 Finance struggled to pull together data
and Customer analytics
in a timely fashion as they manually
consolidated groups of spreadsheets to Why Column5
come up with a single, accurate set of
 Rather than just asking us “what do
reports.
you want?” column5 helped us get the
answers we needed, based on their
Objectives
experience with the product, and not
 Reduce the amount of time spent on
answers imposed by it.‟
consolidating and validating data and
Benefits
more time providing insight
 No additional finance staff needed
 Review and improve processes rather
despite rapid growth and complexity of
than replicate and automating as is
consolidation process. In fact, NG
processes
Bailey was able to redeploy a member
of the finance team elsewhere within
Implementation Highlights
the business, leading to a real cost
 Created a reporting platform that can
saving.
grow with the business.
 Speed at which data can now be
 Financial information is available 2 days
accessed has lead to timely decisionearlier with much less risk associated
making.
with it.

Automated Management Reporting, Detailed
Budgeting & Forecasting
QUICK FACTS
Southwest Securities
Challenges and Opportunities
Why SAP

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Management received reports only
once a year
Data from many sources had to be rekeyed to MS Excel
The budget process consisted of
emailed spreadsheets

Location: Dallas, Texas

Industry: Banking, Securities

Revenue: $478M/$11B in assets

Employees: 1200+

Web Site: www.swst.com

SAP Solutions and Services: SAP Planning
and Consolidation
Objectives

Partner: Column5 Consulting
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Southwest Securities had an inflexible

financial reporting and planning
Implementation Highlights
into Excel, with management receiving

year. Now with SAP Planning &
Consolidation, management gets
monthly reports and can accurately
forecast the business.
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Unified platform: buying one solution
could meet all needs
Ability to drill down through financial
information at all levels
Why SAP
More time available for analyzing the
 Long time experience with OutlookSoft
data and explaining variances
and SAP BPC
Improve internal customers’ satisfaction  Rapid implementation methodology
level
 Expertise in process improvement and
Improve senior management’s
optimization
satisfaction level
process that required rekeying of data
a new reporting package just once a

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
Achieved rapid implementation via
clearly defined requirements and
keeping to defined scope
Started with OutlookSoft 4.1 and
upgraded to SAP BPC 7.0
Benefits
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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
Qwest Communications – Driver-Based
Planning with BPC
QUICK FACTS
Qwest Communications
Challenges and Opportunities
Why SAP

 Centralized database functionality
 Excel interface provided by SAP
Planning and Consolidation
 Support for business rules/logic based
approach .
 Location: Denver, Colorado
 Industry: Telecommunications
 Revenue: $13.4b
 Employees: 31,000

 Web Site: www.qwest.com
 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
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
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
Objectives
needs of a large project
 Gain understanding of what levers
need to pulled to impact the business –  Professional management capability
for a large scale implementation,
i.e. the business drivers
including process, procedures, and risk
 Automate the process of budgeting and
reduction
forecasting, reducing the cycle time for
these tasks and improving business
Benefits
agility
 Provided a fully integrated model that
allowed managers to see the full
Implementation Highlights
impact of a driver change on the
 Built a multi-dimensional model to allow
bottom line
planning by product line, sales channel,
 Developed driver trees that show how
region, etc.
input-level drivers impact higher level
 Changed internal processes and
calculated and aspirational drivers .
measurements to support the new way
of thinking
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