Investment Banking
| Function: | Products: |
| Financial Planning and Reporting | IBM Planning Analytics |
Challenge
This boutique, multimanager firm provides investment management products with a multi-strategy approach. After acquiring another boutique asset management firm, the organization had multiple General Ledgers and planning systems. It decided to consolidate to one General Ledger and one planning system, IBM Planning Analytics.
Solution
The first step was to start with consolidating data from two different companies and financial planning and reporting systems into IBM Planning Analytics. This coincided with a consolidating into a single General Ledger. Both these activities presented Revelwood, working together with the firm, with the opportunity to assess what models were currently being used by both firms, and what new models were required based on the combined firm’s business processes and goals. This “start from scratch” approach enabled the joint team to examine the exact level of detail needed for planning and reporting, as well as what design changes were required to the existing models.
The foundation of everything moving forward would be a core financial planning and reporting model by vendor for the firm’s chart of account lines.
The Revelwood team then built a Staff model, an Incentive Compensation Model, a Revenue Planning Model and additional driver-based models.
Results
With the IBM Planning Analytics-based financial planning and reporting system, the firm can now ask questions such as:
- How are certain staff members, such as legal, allocated across multiple product lines?
- How are specific managers, categories, or product types performing?
- What is our profitability by customer or by supplier?
The entire new Planning Analytics system delivers more efficient financial reporting, an easier way to attribute cost and revenue accurately with appropriate backup, and more detailed and faster strategic analysis. Additionally, having a single, comprehensive, well thought-out platform sets the stage for the investment management firm to expand its use of analytics.