IBM > Case Studies > Erhvervsstyrelsen: Automating financial planning processes and building budgets that everyone believes in

Erhvervsstyrelsen: Automating financial planning processes and building budgets that everyone believes in

Customer Company Size

Large Corporate

Region

Europe

Country

Denmark

Product

IBM Cognos TM1

Tech Stack

IBM Cognos TM1

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Productivity Improvements
Cost Savings

Technology Category

Analytics & Modeling - Predictive Analytics

Use Cases

Predictive Replenishment

Services

System Integration
Training

About The Customer

Erhvervsstyrelsen, the Danish Business Authority, is a government agency that supports businesses across Denmark. It runs 450 projects across 27 offices, employs 600 people, and is responsible for an annual budget of DKK 600 million (USD 89.8 million), as well as a number of national and EU grants. The organization endeavors to create the best conditions for economic growth in Europe, to make it easy and attractive to run a business in Denmark, and to improve Denmark’s competitiveness both within the EU and internationally. To support these objectives, the organization manages approximately 450 different projects, which aim at improving every aspect of the Danish business landscape, from simplifying regulations to fostering entrepreneurship.

The Challenge

Erhvervsstyrelsen, the Danish Business Authority, supports businesses across Denmark. It runs 450 projects across 27 offices, employs 600 people, and is responsible for an annual budget of DKK 600 million (USD 89.8 million), as well as a number of national and EU grants. Each of these projects manages its own budget – but Erhvervsstyrelsen needs to maintain control of overall expenditure, report back to the Danish parliament, and demonstrate the value it delivers for taxpayers’ money. For this reason, it is very important for the organization to have a robust, reliable budgeting process. Erhvervsstyrelsen was formed by a merger of three former agencies, each of which had its own separate budgeting system. Since none of these systems could be adapted to meet the needs of the new organization, Erhvervsstyrelsen set up a new budgeting process based on spreadsheets. This process involved sending out spreadsheets to each project manager, and manually collecting and consolidating the data they sent back.

The Solution

Following a rigorous procurement process, Erhvervsstyrelsen decided to implement an enterprise-class financial planning and analytics solution – IBM® Cognos® TM1®, implemented by IBM Business Partner Kapacity. The main objective was to select a solution that could automatically handle the data collection and consolidation processes, and eliminate the risk of relying on insecure, error-prone spreadsheets. When Kapacity showed what Cognos TM1 could do, the Erhvervsstyrelsen team was impressed – especially because it would be able to map its existing budget process into the system, rather than having to introduce a whole new process. The Erhvervsstyrelsen team was also impressed with the Kapacity consultants’ skills and knowledge, especially in the business analytics and business intelligence domain. The project involved more than just a technical implementation: it was also important to help the users adjust to the new system. It took some time for users to adapt from the familiar spreadsheet-based process to the new interface.

Operational Impact

Instead of entering data into a spreadsheet, project managers now log into a secure web portal and input their figures directly into the IBM solution.
The finance team can see which project managers have completed their entries, and which are still outstanding – so there is no need to worry about whether a spreadsheet has got lost, or if they are looking at the right version.
As a result, the data collection process, which used to take two days, can now be completed in just half a day.
Once the data has been collected, the finance team can consolidate it and create a new version of the budget with a few clicks of the mouse – eliminating a manual process that used to take another two days.

Quantitative Benefit

The data collection process, which used to take two days, can now be completed in just half a day.
The finance team can consolidate it and create a new version of the budget with a few clicks of the mouse – eliminating a manual process that used to take another two days.
Each iteration of the budget now takes half a day, instead of four days.