Planning Solutions

Solution: EPM | Industry: Financial Services

Aegon implemented Oracle EPM for financial reporting, budgeting and planning. Before EPM Aegon reported from their general ledger Sun Accounts but found ad-hoc requests for information and the entering of budgets and forecasts both problematic and time-consuming.

Aegon now use of Oracle EPM Smartview for ad-hoc reporting against actual and budgetary data. Smartview is used as an add-on to Microsoft Office and therefore Aegon users require little or no training to be able to access financial information in Oracle EPM. The implementation of centralised business rules which allow for a common set of logic to be applied has reduced any confusion within the business as to how a number has been generated, as well as the reduction of the risk that this number has been incorrectly derived.

Solution: EPM | Industry: Wine and Spirits

Irish Distillers (IDL) use EPM for their quarterly forecasting and annual budgeting cycles where having one system which integrates actuals with forecasts and budgets enables them to increase productivity, and at the same time deliver accurate forecasts and plans to the business.

Codec implemented the latest version of Oracle EPM to provide faster internal reporting of Sales figures and full costs to management in IDL as well as the formal reporting of Financial information to Irish Distillers parent company Pernod Ricard. During month-end financial data is made available 3-4 times a day from the core SAP systems into EPM in order to provide consolidated, translated data using different rates for both IDL business in the Republic and Northern Ireland. This enables IDL finance teams to slice and dice information to quickly respond to questions from the business at key times during close.

Solution: EPM | Industry: Building Materials 

Kingspan worked with Codec to implement Infor EPM, initially for Management Reporting for all of their business divisions globally. Before this, each division acted autonomously providing monthly management reports in different formats to Kingspan’s group head office which then had to be reviewed, consolidated, reviewed and presented. This was a very labour-intensive process with a lot of risk involved as data was copied and pasted from various management packs into the group reporting pack.

With Codec’s help Kingspan have been able to standardise on submissions, and provide additional features to their business divisions adding value and time-saving efficiencies around their reporting process. Following on from this Kingspan have replaced an old statutory reporting system (Great Plains) with the Infor EPM allowing for Management and Statutory reports to be available in one common application, again providing time-saving efficiencies and standardising on one common set of reports.

Solution: EPM | Industry: Banking 

By engaging with Codec to deliver an integrated BI and EPM platform, PTSB have seen a number of benefits within the Group Finance Department. The focus has switched from the actual production of reports to analysis of data, enabling the team to make better decisions on behalf of the bank.

Productivity within teams has increased tenfold as there is no longer a requirement to manually produce reports on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Finally, the quality and confidence in the reports and plans which are produced through the new solution is much higher due to in-built controls, governance and the resulting lack of human error.

Solution: EPM | Industry: Airlines/Aviation 

Codec provided Dubai Aerospace Enterprise (DAE)/AWAS with a monthly financial management and statutory reporting module, and a forecasting and planning module that delivered a speedy and efficient solution for their planning and budgeting needs.

Going forward when the company has to adjust figures or details for their fleet of aircraft it will not be necessary to contact their Excel expert and ask them to modify the huge and unwieldy Excel file. Instead they now have access to a streamlined solution that promises to automate the process as much as possible, and create a new and user-friendly approach to the approval and sign-off process (from the relevant and multi-departmental stakeholders).

In short EPM empowers DAE/AWAS by both reducing workload, and optimising the planning and reporting processes, enabling them to reach performance goals, enhance efficiency and optimise business processes.

Solution: EPM | Industry: Government Administration

Codec’s deployment of Oracle’s EPM solution tidied up all Essex County Council’s complex data requirements so that the reporting process became more streamlined and completely automated.

The data from various sources within the local government agency including the general ledgers, HR, refuse management, care systems and other projects was transferred to the newly-built and enhanced forecasting system, which then relayed financial actuals to pre-determined segmented locations such as “Projects” or “Ledger” or whatever was the appropriate category.

The information was then passed to a data warehouse where it was repackaged and repurposed for individual dashboards or variant analysis. As a result of the newly compartmentalised data streams every individual stakeholder need only access the EPM solution to get the specific information s/he needs in an instant.

Solution: EPM | Industry: Pharmaceuticals

Icon is a global provider of outsourced development services to the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device industries. Icon contacted Codec initially with respect to their Backlog Reporting. Their system was excel-based and had issues in relation to: non-confirming formats of reporting, an unstandardised set of rules\logic, a lot of manual effort required in relation to checking data. Consolidation of spreadsheets was onerous and time-consuming  and knowledge was held by just 1 or 2 key people.

Codec provided a solution centred around Oracle EPM and Essbase. This provided a unified reporting and data collection method with data stored from all divisions (Europe, US, Latin America etc.) into a central database which could then be consolidated, and reported on easily by the group. Icon now benefits from a central source of information, automated loading of actuals from the General Ledgers and faster reporting of backlog and reduction of risk around business rules\logic.

Solution: EPM | Industry: Insurance

Codec consultants worked with the Irish Life in developing the functional requirements and technical design for the development of financial reports on top of an OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) Solution. There were a number of source systems such as Financial GL, Enterprise Data warehouse, Excel and third-party databases.

Codec consultants designed and developed a centralised web-based tactical solution made up of EPM Hyperion Planning and Financial Reporting cube/application. All source systems were brought together in a staging database and loaded into the relevant dimensional model allowing for centralised calculations with direct input via the web front end and data directly loaded from the general ledger, HR, and fixed asset register via Oracle Data Integrator (ODI). The Planning system was deployed to Group Finance, Corporate Business and Retail Finance teams within IL&P. Irish life now have a centralised reporting function which can run ad-hoc analysis. The ability to filter the financial information along with any supplementary information from both a web front-end and Excel environment and predefined reporting packs are automatically updated and distributed to the relevant people across the organisation.

Solution: EPM | Industry: Medical Devices

Creganna, belonging to the TE Connectivity group, chose Codec as the specialist partner to improve its Oracle EPM business model and incorporate the Advanced Cath company, previously acquired by the group. Codec was responsible for migrating the whole solution to the latest version and expanding the functionalities to accommodate the new company for its budget planning process.

As a result of the work Creganna have experience a significant improvement in performance calculations and queries are now faster than the previous system and there is a new cube dedicated only to reporting, reducing the access load in the planning application.

Solution: EPM | Industry: Education 

Codec is proud to have worked with UCD in delivering the first cloud deployment of EPM in the country. UCD’s request to Codec was to help facilitate a best practice financial planning process. Budgeting had previously been spreadsheet-based, and consolidation and sharing of information had been time-consuming and subject to the risks inherent with spreadsheet models. As a modern forward-thinking University, UCD sought to align their planning processes with the multitude of benefits associated with moving to the cloud. Their goals were to enable and improve the efficiency and quality of the annual budgeting process, to enhance regular forecasting and reporting, and to be able to access a flexible platform for further improvements in financial and other planning activities.

Codec’s team of consultants made these aspirations a reality by implementing Oracle’s Planning Budgeting Cloud Service (PBCS) to immediately meet UCD’s financial planning requirements, and provide a platform for future enhancement and more devolved planning. PBCS also allows for standardised automated structured interfaces with a variety of other systems, and integration with Excel is a particularly strong element of the solution. In making the jump to the cloud with PBCS the University is already experiencing the benefits of a more robust planning system with 24/7 availability.