Specialty Financial Services Firm

Project:   In 2006, this mid-sized financial services firm was experiencing phenomenal growth.  Several new business units had been created.  The company was struggling with problems caused by fragmentation of information across multiple systems, which made consolidated reporting and analysis very difficult.  Cross-system reporting was a highly labor-intensive process, involving complex Excel spreadsheets. 

Initially brought in to carry out an assessment of the IT organization, Axis Group recommended an iterative approach to designing and building a new enterprise information management system.  Axis was then asked to tackle the firm's most pressing challenge -- providing a reliable and efficient financial reporting process.  Axis delivered a comprehensive solution -- using Wherescape Red to build a consolidated financial data repository and Cognos to provide reporting and analytical capabilities.  Axis also created standardized processes that could be owned and operated by Finance, with limited IT involvement.

Technology:  Wherescape Red, Cognos.

Benefits:

• Reduced time required to produce quality financial reports from three to five days to one hour.

• Dramatically increased report frequency, from quarterly to on demand..

• Ability to perform new types of analysis, including analysis across business entities and functions -- support for multiple roll-ups and hierarchies..

• Insights into numbers through data lineage and tracking of changes.

• Locked-down process -- reliable, accurate, and compliant.

• Process owned by Finance, freeing up IT resources.