Plan of approach
“I’ve been with the company for 11 years – our business is always changing and there’s always something new happening,” explains the VP of Finance / Financial Planning & Analysis with a leading global manufacturer of jobsite solutions for the construction industry. “Today, data and financial reporting are more important than ever in our business. My team owns the reporting and forecasting process, pulling information together and supporting other finance professionals within the company. They, in turn, have their own internal customers, such as the marketing and business teams. My own team has to be sure we’re presenting the right information in a consistent manner and that data is correct and reported on time.”
“We began working with the cpmVision team in the fall of 2020. We needed to move information from our CCH® Tagetik corporate performance management software into a Microsoft Power BI platform that didn’t previously exist. There was no systematic way of doing this. CCH® Tagetik introduced us to cpmVision, who they were sure would be able to extract our data to a Power BI format. We had some conversations about the cpmVision product and how we could benefit from having that tweaked to meet our needs.”
Historically, cpmVision had been working with smaller companies that often didn’t have a specific data warehouse or data team. This large company, however, was working with an established platform and team. From a modelling standpoint, this presented cpmVision with a new challenge. The existing model was not enough for the company, who needed extra flexibility and wanted to insert data into Power BI in a completely new and different way.
Receptive and accommodating
“The cpmVision team was very receptive to our needs from the start. They went back to the drawing board to figure out how to rework the application in order to serve companies that already had a fixed infrastructure in place. They were very accommodating. Their team really listened to why the current solution wouldn’t work for us and what we needed to realize a truly viable platform. They spent some time redesigning cpmVision and in spring 2021 they came up with a solution that fits our needs. After that, it took six months to build and test it, and we went live in fall of 2021. After working out a few kinks we could soon offer the solution to our end users."
"The solution is working well - we can visualize the data we need in Power BI and work with it. We’ve also further developed the dashboard. Around 15 people in different teams are currently using the solution. As we tweak it and build it out, there’s opportunity for further growth. We’re in the phase of validating and learning to work with the system now. The goal is to present it to more people throughout this year. At present, we’re continuously asking users what their business partners might be interested in so that we can implement this in future versions.”
Advantages
“Having a dashboard that can be refreshed in real time is a huge benefit.
Data is neatly presented and we can simply copy and paste it into presentations, for example - a big time saver.
Different visualizations help us get our talking points across quickly and clearly. Better data usage means better advice, so the solution adds value for business partners too. Consistent data presentation throughout the company also ensures messages are consistent across business areas and over time.”
“I would certainly recommend cpmVision. We appreciated their willingness to partner with us as we went into uncharted territory. They’re very easy to work with and really understood our challenges in order to find the best solutions. When it came to the quality of the work cpmVision delivered, feedback from our technical team was positive. We certainly appreciate their willingness to adapt their product to meet our needs and the way they kept to every step in the planning. The combination of product, service and configurability really made the difference and resulted in a quality solution. We’re looking to develop that partnership as we continue to build out this solution in the future.”
