Major Telecom
deFacto Replaces Underperforming SAP System Used for Financial Planning Eliminates Performance and Worker Bottlenecks While Bringing New Levels of Scalability, Reliability, Accuracy, Data Integration, and Usability
Summary
A major telecom’s financial planning and forecasting system were unable to handle an increasingly large volume of data, which was causing several crippling problems.
After researching potential alternative solutions, the company chose deFacto because of its unique ability to provide scalability, interoperability, accuracy, reliability, data management capabilities, and an Excel interface.
The improvements have been dramatic—including an overall performance improvement of 1,000%, while the financial planning system has become much more stable.
Problem
Like many large companies, this telecom giant collects global forecasting data from hundreds of users around the world and compares it to actual data from their financial systems to constantly refine their overall planning process.
For several years the finance department at the company used OutlookSoft (now SAP BPC) to perform these tasks, but rapidly increasing quantities of data and larger numbers of data sources were pushing the tool’s limits. The system’s inability to handle the data was causing several crippling problems:
- As data volume increased, the software’s performance suffered.
- As the number and variety of data sources grew, the system became cumbersome to use and delivered less reliable results.
- End users had to log out of the system while processing took place, resulting in the loss of many hours of productive work time.
Solution
Ultimately, OutlookSoft could not serve the financial group’s needs. The team determined that it needed a solution that could both scale to more users and data and meet its high reporting standards.
While evaluating the financial modeling solutions available the team identified the following key requirements that any new solution must deliver:
- Scalable to larger numbers of users and quantities of data
- Able to accept and manipulate data from disparate systems and sources
- Accurate and reliable
- Accessible by a familiar front-end, preferably Excel
The solution that best met these standards would be the company’s clear choice. In researching potential solutions, the financial group discovered that most tools lacked functionality, reporting capabilities and flexibility in the Excel reporting interface, and frustrated by a lack. The exception was deFacto, which was chosen because of its scalability, interoperability, accuracy, reliability, and Excel interface.
Results
The financial group’s overall performance has improved by 1,000% while their system has become much more stable. With deFacto, users now get onto their applications much more quickly, calculations are processed in a fraction of the time, and reports are generated significantly faster than with the old system.
“In looking for a solution, deFacto stood out for its scalability, reliability, accuracy, Excel front end, and its ability to accept and manipulate data from disparate sources.”—Financial Group Manager