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 There was no reporting consistency and in many cases the underlying data was outdated or incorrect.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.”