The Oracle EPM implementation that reduced budget cycles by 60%
Key Outcomes
Ability to create multiple planning models in minutes
60% reduction in budget cycle time
Faster and data driven income planning cycle
Enhanced and faster decision-making
The Client
A non-operating holding company and licensed banking institution with branches across Africa, including Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Ethiopia, and South Sudan. The company has oversight over all banking and incidental operations of entities held by it.
The Challenge
The client’s operations and services, which are spread across several countries, have a complex loan- and deposit-based banking revenue model. Preparing the budget for all its branches meant processing enormous amounts of data from several sources, which took a long time to be finalized. This also meant that finance analysts were spending most of their time on budget preparation, compromising their focus on analysis and decision-making.
Constellation was chosen as the implementation partner thanks to our deep experience in EPM processes and associated technologies. Our team acted as a functional process advisor as well as a system implementer. We presented the client with a complete EPM road map that enabled project completion in four months, and delivered on the client’s objectives, viz. improving efficiency, productivity, and driving a digital future. Further absence of integration between the client’s core banking system, enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform, and asset management application meant there was no common reporting. And it was slowing down management reporting.
Our Solution
The client needed a cloud-based planning and budgeting platform that would automate processes and ensure rapid delivery of financial data and reports to key stakeholders.
Oracle Cloud Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) was selected for its ability to integrate seamlessly with the group’s core banking and other systems, and its comprehensive functionality. It would simplify the deployment process and accelerate time to value.
Outcomes
- The Oracle Cloud EPM Planning implementation automated and integrated financial planning and budgeting processes of all entities across geographies. This shortened the deployment process cycle and boosted decision-making across business lines.
- Budget preparation time at the branch and business segment levels was reduced by 60%.
- The implementation freed up time that would otherwise be spent on gathering and consolidating data from multiple systems. As a result, the finance team was free to devote more time to key tasks, such as in-depth financial analyses, and less time gathering and consolidating huge amounts of data from various disparate systems.
- The revamped planning process gave the client the ability to draw strategic plan simulations on top of Oracle Cloud EPM, within minutes faster, more accurately, and without dependence on unreliable external market drivers and trends alone.
- Integration of Oracle Cloud EPM with the client’s banking and data warehouse accelerated reporting of actuals vs forecasts.
- Overall, the implementation of Oracle Cloud EPM helped boost the productivity and collaboration of finance teams by providing a single source of truth easily accessible on a common platform anytime, anywhere.
Click here to know more – KCB Group (oracle.com)