Consolidating globally dispersed financial information

Using CornerStar Business Intelligence to analyze Service contracts improved profitability and margins.

Problem: The client had distributed databases connected by a WAN. One of their databases resides in the US and another one is in the UK. Both databases handle heavy loads of sales transactions. Users had to wait until after month end to get consolidated revenue or financial reports.

Solution: The client’s picture changed completely when we installed our solution. The CornerStar Sales Mart now collects and consolidates data from both the Parent (US) and the Local Entity (UK) databases nightly. Local Entity and Parent currency amounts (US Dollars) are calculated by CornerStar. Parent company users have the ability to see Parent (US), Local Entity (UK), PLUS consolidated figures on a daily basis. Local Entity(UK) users who do not have direct access to the consolidated figures can still monitor their impact on Parent targets via an ingenious subset calculation in Parent currency provided by the client's own sales Data Mart.

Disparate Systems with different functional currencies are consolidated into CornerStar Data Marts. Financial and Sales Reportscan be generated in both the Corporate and Local Currencies

Outcome: Both operations are now able to more closely monitor planned to actual performance during the month or quarter rather than waiting until it is too late to adjust strategy. Other benefits included:

• Ability for managers to view daily refreshes of departmental expenses to plan reports resulting in better managerial decisions
• Ability to distinguish between profitable and non-profitable products and services
• Sales Analysis reports tie to the penny with the General Ledger
• Sharp increases in productivity
• Freeing of analyst and programming manpower