Share this Mister Wong Digg Del.icio.us Slashdot Furl Yahoo Technorati Newsvine Googlize this Blinklist Facebook Wikio Hear this text Print E-mail Tags ibm group cognos nedbank phase solution level budgeting applications management performance decentralised data different divisions implemented financial finance business reporting Taryne Eastwood

Nedbank Group rolls out IBM Cognos solution as part of Financial Processing Architecture programme

6 November 2009

Nedbank Group, a large banking and financial services organisation, with four business facing clusters and three service areas, has an immensely complex budgeting and finance operation.

At the IBM Financial Performance Management event, held recently at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Rosebank, Preyesh Mestry, Head of IBM Cognos Development and Support at Nedbank Group, discussed the challenges faced by the group and how a Financial Processing Architecture (FPA) was implemented, using IBM Cognos technology as a base, to help solve some of these issues and streamline the finance and budgeting processes.

According to Mestry: "Prior to implementing IBM Cognos Software, Nedbank's budgeting was completed on spreadsheets and a variety of other applications. Calculating group level budgets was conducted in this way too, interfacing at a divisional level. This meant that the various divisions and Group finance often had different final numbers. Another problem was that the level of detail varied greatly between clusters as the reporting was based on data from many disparate toolsets."

"This is a common problem among large, geographically dispersed or decentralised organisations," said David McWilliam, Manager: IBM Business Intelligence & Performance Management, IBM South Africa. "Disparate data coming from many different sources leads to complexity, inaccuracy, error and time wasted spent trying to correct these  mistakes that could have been avoided in the first place."

Several vendors were involved in the selection process before Nedbank group settled on the IBM Cognos platform, selecting Cognos because of its flexibility, ease of use, look and feel, its alignment with the technical and architectural functions at Nedbank, and the total cost of ownership, which is far lower than many of IBM's competitors.

The FPA was designed to give Nedbank 'a single version of the truth' from the various data warehouses, data marts and other source systems. In partnership with Fios and  IBM, the solution was implemented through a phased approach, beginning with the first release of the budgeting and forecasting solution, which at this level was decentralised and bottom-up, and included management calculations such as FTP, Funding and Capital Allocation. Phase one was rolled out over period of seven months to 250 users across the Nedbank Group.

"We had several challenges with this first stage of the implementation," says Mestry. "Timelines were short, change management was difficult to handle, testing of the different applications presented difficulties, as did the integration of applications, and the reporting solution was not integrated at this stage."

Phase two involved the second release of the budgeting and forecasting tools. This phase was rolled out over four months and was designed to streamline the processes  implemented during phase one. The number of applications needed was significantly reduced, as was the complexity, performance of applications was improved, the technical environment was enhanced, and users became more familiar with the system.  

Phase three aimed at enhancing existing functionality and adding extra functions, and was implemented during a five month timeframe. During this phase a Salary Planning  Application was developed right down to employee level and decentralised to divisions. This phase also included the implementation of an IBM Cognos BI reporting solution for the different divisions, clusters and Group.

"The IBM Cognos solution has several benefits for the Nedbank Group," concluded Mestry. "It is a fully decentralised solution, so that divisions can prepare their budgets at a detailed level, based on their own requirements, with full drill down capability. A central database means that there is a single source of the truth for budgeting and forecasting purposes. This leads to quicker turnaround times, enhanced processes, more ownership at cluster level and ultimately alignment between Group and Cluster budgets and forecasts."

For further information or to reach a representative: www.ibm.com/cognos

IBM Cognos Software
David McWilliam
Manager: IBM Business Intelligence & Performance Management
Tel: 011-6035700
Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Evolution PR
Pat McClelland
Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Tel: 011-4620628

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