User Spotlight: Georgiou Group

Using PowerOLAP to Create a Synergy That Leads to Speedy Decision Making

CandyRific Retail Business Intelligence Reporting Story

“USING PowerOLAP IS HELPING US BECOME THE BEST PEOPLE TO WORK WITH”

~Errol Keyt Chief Financial Officer, Georgiou Group

User Story: Using PowerOLAP to Create a Synergy That Leads to Speedy Decision Making.

Georgiou Group, a leading Engineering Services company located in Western Australia providing Civil Infrastructure, Building Construction and Property Development services, uses PowerOLAP to create an automated accurate financial reporting system that leads to better collaboration between the financial team and project managers. Over 30 Years of Excellence Once known as Direct Drainage, Georgiou Group Pty Ltd was founded in 1977 and expanded with the acquisition of Roadpave and Geocrete in 1991 to become Georgiou Group in 1998. The company specializes in earthworks, roads & bridges, structural concrete, water infrastructure, precast, non-process infrastructure, marine & port infrastructure, building construction, camp accommodation & villages, and land development. The company prides itself with working with the people in the industry and achieving outstanding results—a value that implementing PowerOLAP enhances.

Manual Data Manipulation and Financial Reporting Leads to Inconsistency. Project transparency was a problem at Georgiou. Project managers spent days extracting, collating and manipulating data in their own Excel models to determine project performance. There was no reporting consistency and in many cases the underlying data was outdated or incorrect. Basically, the company was making decisions on incorrect information. Project Managers were spending far too much time obtaining and compiling project information and the finance team spent too much time consolidating and correcting the data – rather than actually analyzing it.

Instant Analysis with Accurate Data “The ERP system, in place when I started at Georgiou, captured financial data well but we had little ability to see that information in a meaningful format or make informed business decisions. We also relied heavily on Excel models that were prone to error and instability to determine project performance. We had two choices,” said CFO Errol Keyt, “implement a new ERP system or add OLAP technology to the existing system. I had used PowerOLAP at another organization, so it made sense to bring it in.” Keyt’s comments are significant and insightful: while accounting systems are designed to capture and store data, releasing the “business intelligence” from that data is not always easy. With the implementation of PowerOLAP Georgiou is able to extract information from the existing ERP and populate it into a specially designed data warehouse. Reports can then be produced instantaneously, providing accurate financial information including historical performance, projected performance, budgets and variance analysis. Other important non-financial information can also be imported into the data warehouse, which results in an extremely powerful reporting system that goes beyond traditional financial metrics. This data cube technology then allows staff to extract and analyze this data in any format they want. “What PowerOLAP allows us to do is to bring all our financial and non-financial metrics together in a quick, simple and yet powerful manner so that we can achieve our daily operational activities. This frees our project people up to do what is important from— quickly identifying bottlenecks for delivering our projects efficiently and on time to—highlighting cash flows for working capital optimization so that we can be the best people to work with”

Benefits: Key benefits from the introduction of PowerOLAP include:

The ability to create reports using a single source of accurate and reliable financial information
Simplified, faster and more accurate project forecasting and budgeting
Instant project reporting at the press of a button
Immediate consolidation of project performance across the organization
Fast and reliable month end reporting
Flexible and static project reporting directly through an Excel front end

“Georgiou’s corporate vision is to be ‘the best people to work with,’” says Errol Keyt, Chief Financial Officer. “It may be strange to say it, but a business intelligence and forecasting solution using PowerOLAP is helping Georgiou achieve that vision.”

Easy Collaboration ties into Georgiou’s Vision. PowerOLAP has provided Georgiou with significant benefits including improved accuracy, reliability, transparency and speed of data collection and analysis. Two other outcomes have been enhanced communication and teamwork. There is now a very good synergy between Operations and Finance. Financial outcomes, resulting from business decisions, are now transparent. As a consequence, project managers are now proactively discussing project outcomes and seeking advice and input from the finance team on how to improve them. Georgiou is giving their staff the best tools possible to help them be the “the best people to work with.”

Quick Facts

Objectives

Eliminate manual financial reporting process Reduce errors, and manual reconciliation Make better business decisions with up-to-date information Reduce time and cost for financial reporting Quick integration to existing ERP System Increase project transparency

Increase reporting consistency and accuracy

PARIS Solutions and Services

Implementation

Highlights

Integrated multi-entity Income Statements, Balance Sheets, Statement of Cash Flows and Job Costing Analysis with Actual, Budget and Forecast….all created with “drag & drop” ease.

Forecast cost to complete scenarios by Job, Cost Code, Category and Detail line all phased by month using percent, days or S Curve phasing techniques.

Compare current Forecast “Cost at Completion” figures against prior period Forecasts “At Completion” figures to see which projects are not on track.

Comprehensive project performance analysis and easy multi- user re-forecasting with PowerOLAP “Cost to Complete”

Seamless integration with Excel means users work productively with Excel, rather than be enslaved by it.

Powerful multi-user security system with optional Active Directory Authentication means access to sensitive information is governed by granular level security.

Enhances rather than replaces the investment in the Timberline Job Costing and GL System.

Why PARIS

Quick installation and implementation process.

Easy integration for existing ERP system.

Benefits

The ability to create reports using a single source of accurate and reliable financial information

Simplified, faster and more accurate project forecasting and budgeting

Instant project reporting at the press of a button

Immediate consolidation of project performance across the organization

Fast and reliable month end reporting Flexible and static project reporting directly through an Excel front end

Existing Environment

Non-automated reporting

No project transparency

Third Party Integration

Database: Microsoft SQL

Analysis/Reporting: Microsoft Excel

ERP: Timberline