Faster and higher quality planning to over 450 client machines in just six weeks

Standard Life wanted to streamline budget planning and reporting by introducing a unified planning process. Its current system, an Excel-based solution, was painfully slow, lacked version control, and exposed the organization to potential compliance risk. The highly manual process was difficult to administrate and a headache for the finance team . While Standard Life had an existing data warehouse with web reporting, it had no planning functionality. Despite the existing web-based reporting, users still exported to Excel to analyze and plan, which meant spending time gathering and consolidating data.

After closely reviewing the market, Standard Life selected Jedox. Jedox’s tight Excel integration made it easy to use, and the writeback, in-memory rules, and real-time consolidation met Standard Life’s planning goals perfectly. Jedox stood out when it came to high performance and total cost of ownership.

With the help of one Jedox consultant, Standard Life’s finance team set up Jedox for budget planning in parallel with day-to-day business. The team integrated upstream data from both Oracle and SAP, and used Jedox’s built-in SAP connectors to shorten implementation. Stringent user permissions were set up easily through Jedox’s security model, so each user securely accessed only their discrete part of the organization. Standard Life implemented Jedox for sophisticated budget planning to 450 client machines. Implementation took less than six weeks and, in this time, the internal finance team became Jedox experts, thereafter owning and extending the solution independently. Business users were now empowered to plan by personnel, resources, investments, and cost types. After rolling out budgeting, the finance team developed monthly actual and plan cost center reporting, forecasting adjustments, exception reporting, instant consolidations, ad hoc queries, and scenario planning.

Return on investment was immediately obvious, along with higher data quality. Internal cost-benefit analysis revealed greater accuracy in plans and forecasting efficiency by eliminating manual interfaces. Jedox provides Standard Life with a single source of truth for reporting and planning from multiple Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions, so the organization can accelerate planning and improve data quality to maximize profitability and manage compliance. The intuitive scenario planning and ad hoc analyses mean business users have self-service independence to get exactly what they need, using timely and trusted data. Jedox makes it easier to execute plans, understand risk factors, and budget financial resources to support all initiatives. Quantifiable time gains mean that, instead of manipulating data, the finance team can now add real value, by analyzing results and providing advice to management with insight and confidence.