FINANCE

Customer perspective: streamlined budgeting, from days to hours

October 18, 2006

"With Cognos, we have not only streamlined our budgeting process, but we have decreased month-end processing time from days to a few hours." – Debbie Pastura, Assistant Corporate Controller, Rumpke

Rumpke Consolidated Companies, Inc. is among the largest privately owned waste and recycling companies in the U.S. The family-run business serves hundreds of thousands of residential, commercial, and industrial customers and owns or operates nine landfills, several transfer stations, and six recycling centers in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana.

The need to streamline

With Cognos, Rumpke has implemented a planning solution to streamline its budgeting process. In addition, Cognos analysis software provides real-time information on overall productivity, payroll, and status by line of business.

With a growing need for waste management across the region, Rumpke was serving an increasing number of customers. And as their business expanded, so too did their information management challenges.

A key problem was how to efficiently collect budget data from different parts of the business that were spread across three states. The company was using a spreadsheet-based process, where information was manually collected from hundreds of people on an ongoing basis. It was time-consuming and inefficient.

As well, people wanted to be able to analyze their budget values dynamically, instead of using the flat, slow, and static operational reports they were used to.

From manual to automated processes

Rumpke decided to move its manual collection of budget data over to an automated planning system. The Cognos Planning solution would help define and link the operational drivers for the entire planning, budgeting, and forecasting process.

The software delivered immediate benefits when it was first launched. But it was only in the hands of a few users, who still needed to compile the necessary values from people in the various lines of business.

So Rumpke contacted Cognos again with a plan to expand their budgeting process further into the field. This time, they deployed Cognos Enterprise Planning over the Web for expanded use by the regions and people at corporate. At this point, adding Cognos PowerPlay® would also allow finance staff to analyze budget values before, during, and after the process in real time.

"We had some experience with Cognos before," says Debbie Pastura, Assistant Corporate Controller at Rumpke. "We knew the Web-enabled system would provide easier and broader access to information. Cognos also made it easy to compare and manipulate data across many dimensions and perspectives. The training was easier. And we were impressed with their partners."

In this case, PCMS Analytics Group, a Cognos Platinum Reseller, managed the software implementation. By leveraging its expertise in the heavy equipment industry, PCMS was able to integrate the enterprise planning system with Rumpke's legacy applications.

Discovering "unprecedented" capabilities

"With Cognos, we have not only streamlined our budgeting process, but we have decreased month-end processing time from days to a few hours. We have discovered unprecedented capabilities in allocations, top-down and bottom-up changes, and the ability to quickly roll up the various regional budgets into an overall corporate budget," says Pastura.

The Web-based platform allows different regions of the company to produce their own plans. The organization then uses consolidation at the corporate level to create consistent, interconnected planning models that accurately reflect cross-functional dependencies.

"We now have a stronger platform for decision-making with multiple planning models to address regional diversity with defined corporate consistency," says Pastura.

Reduced administrative burden

Streamlining budgets and forecasts has also reduced the administrative burden on finance, so staff can spend more time on value-added analysis. Finance not only delivers financial statements (income statement and balance sheet) but also provides analytics in areas such as productivity and payroll. Staff can even perform financial analysis by district – something that was nearly impossible before.

In terms of operations, users also analyze things like truck weights and materials as well as the status of each landfill. "Our finance team is now able to proactively provide insightful analytics for overall productivity, payroll, and landfill status by line of business," says Pastura. She adds that linking both the operational and financial aspects of the business has provided other benefits.

"Because of the way the financial information coincides with the productivity information, it helps people work together and makes them more accountable. If something happens, users can drill down and see what's going on. The more information we have from the productivity side, the more people want to use it."

Execs the most frequent users

And the software is not just for financial analysts. Executives, including the CEO and CFO, have some of the highest usage rates in the company. They drive their board of directors meetings using in-depth reports and analysis.

With access to a single source of comprehensive information, there is less debate over definitions or accuracy. Instead, meetings are more efficient and people make informed decisions based on real-time insight into the business.