Eliminating spreadsheets to improve the quality of data at MAIER

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About MAIER
MAIER, a member company of the Mondragón Group, manufactures components and subcomponents for the automobile, household appliance and consumer electronics industries. It works with 15 leading automobile manufacturers around the world and has plants in Spain, the United Kingdom and the Czech Republic, with offices in France, Sweden, the USA and Japan. The company has 1,800 employees and an annual turnover of €200 million.

Budgeting management plan
“Until 2005, MAIER's financial success had pushed any need to ‘restructure’ management into the background, especially in the area of budgeting, but competitive pressures and increasing client demands now require us to obtain more fine-tuned information for decision making from the data that are spread throughout the company,” explains Augusto Araneta, MAIER's Group Financial Director.

The problems to be solved centred around the difficulty of capturing information, data quality issues, the multiplicity of variables to be taken into account, and the constantly changing data in spreadsheets. The biggest problem of all was the lack of resources available for analysing data and the huge amount of time spent validating it. Under these circumstances, the budget preparation process was very expensive. The first step was to focus on the development of analytic accounting capabilities, and then to move on to a system for planning, budgeting and management control.

“The whole budgeting cycle was very slow. The management plan had to cover the areas of sales, purchasing, human resources, expenses, investments, loans and discounts,” continues Augusto Araneta.

Finding a solution
In July 2005, the MAIER Group undertook a project aimed at improving its management plan. After carrying out a series of benchmark tests of three tools, it decided to adopt IBM Cognos technology.

“The results left no room for doubt: neither of the other two solutions offered the capabilities, the power, or the market reputation of the IBM Cognos software,” says Araneta.

IBM Cognos software helps companies manage, monitor, and understand the scope and performance of their business activities. Corporate performance management (CPM) solutions based on IBM Cognos software help to plan and manage business performance, monitor it through an integrated balanced scorecard, and interpret it using business analytics tools.

A three-phase project
The first phase involved preparing the management plan. The aim of the second phase was to follow up on that plan through the creation of a management control system. During the third phase, a management plan review was put into place, with the aim of implementing necessary changes identified during the implementation of the management plan.

The objectives of the budgeting system are to integrate information from the marketing, materials requirement planning (MRP) and human resources systems, and to automate the processes of spreadsheet distribution, collection, and consolidation.

Among the most important achievements quantified by the MAIER Group are the consistency of sale and consumption budget data (which account for about 80 percent of the budget); the total elimination of user intervention in information capture; the coherency of the management plan; and the speed and flexibility of changes to the model and its variables. Likewise, MAIER has been able to eliminate the need for spreadsheet capture. It has also automated data consolidation and achieved corporate-level awareness of systems integration.

Benefits
• Consistency of sales and consumption budgeting data.
• Creation of a coherent Management Plan, which has the necessary speed and flexibility to make changes to the model and its variables.
• Automation of consolidation processes.
• Achievement of corporate-level awareness of systems integration.

About Lantares
Lantares is a solution provider for IBM Cognos technologies whose staff includes professionals officially certified by IBM. It is a leader in the development and implementation of corporate performance management (CPM) solutions. It offers consulting services that range from project definition through to architectural design, based on expertise acquired over the course of many reporting, analysis, balanced scorecard and budgeting projects, and aims to help companies achieve the best results at the lowest costs possible.

After three years in the market, more than 75 clients and 6,000 end-users now place their trust in the experience and business knowledge of Lantares' consulting team.

About IBM Business Analytics
IBM Business Analytics software delivers actionable insights decision-makers need to achieve better business performance. IBM offers a comprehensive, unified portfolio of business intelligence, predictive and advanced analytics, financial performance and strategy management, governance, risk and compliance and analytic applications.

With IBM software, companies can spot trends, patterns and anomalies, compare “what if” scenarios, predict potential threats and opportunities, identify and manage key business risks and plan, budget and forecast resources. With these deep analytic capabilities our customers around the world can better understand, anticipate and shape business outcomes.