Client Overview
The client is Kuwait’s largest national oil refining company, processing approximately 917.7 thousand barrels per day across its three refineries. With a key role in refining crude oil and liquefying gas, the company plays a significant part in the region’s energy sector. As part of its ongoing digital transformation, the company sought to modernize its planning and budgeting processes to overcome legacy system limitations.
IT Challenges
The company faced several challenges related to its budgeting and planning processes, which were previously managed using IBM Cognos Enterprise Planning (EP):
- Time-Consuming Budgeting Process: The legacy system was slow, requiring a significant amount of time for each budgeting cycle.
- Lack of Control: The existing system lacked adequate control, leading to inefficiencies and difficulty in tracking budget changes.
- Performance Issues: The system had performance limitations due to restricted cube size, impacting the company’s ability to handle large volumes of data.
- Fragmented Applications: Different departments used separate applications, leading to inefficiencies and data inconsistencies across the organization.
Solution Footprint
To address these challenges, Luppiter Pvt Ltd migrated the company’s budgeting and planning model from IBM Cognos Enterprise Planning to IBM Cognos TM1 10.2.2. This migration aimed to streamline processes, improve data integration, and enhance overall system performance.
Stakeholder’s Requirements
Key requirements from the client included:
- Retaining Existing Budgeting Process: Ensuring that the new system replicated the existing budget process within TM1.
- Data Integration Across Departments: Integrating data between HR, Recordbook, and the Financial Model to improve consistency and efficiency.
- Faster Budgeting Cycle: Accelerating the budgeting process to meet the company’s tight timelines.
- Automated Data Entry: Automating data entry fields from source systems to reduce manual effort.
- Real-Time Reporting: Enabling the HR department to access daily reports with real-time data for analysis.
Features of the Solution Offered
Luppiter implemented a comprehensive solution to address the client’s requirements:
- Daily Reports for HR: Developed automated daily reports for the HR department, ensuring real-time access to crucial data for analysis.
- Automated Budgeting: Automated the budgeting process, ensuring that it adhered to the current workflows while enhancing speed and accuracy.
- Data Integration: Integrated data across multiple departments—HR, Recordbook, and Financial Model—to create a unified view of financial and operational data.
- Single Cube for Financial Rules: Implemented a single TM1 cube to handle all financial rules, ensuring consistency and accuracy across the organization.
Benefits Delivered
The implementation of IBM Cognos TM1 led to several key benefits:
- Timely Delivery of Reports: The client could now deliver timely financial and operational reports to the parent company, improving transparency and decision-making.
- Reduced Communication Gaps: The integration between departments reduced communication gaps, ensuring that all stakeholders were on the same page regarding budgets and financial forecasts.
- Reduced IT Team Effort: With minimized administrative activities, the IT team’s workload was significantly reduced, allowing them to focus on more strategic tasks.
- Increased Data Accuracy: The integration of data from different departments ensured higher data accuracy, improving decision-making across the organization.
- Version Control: Users could now maintain multiple versions of the data, providing flexibility and better tracking of budget changes.
- Enhanced Performance: The TM1 solution addressed the performance limitations of the legacy system, ensuring faster and more efficient processing of large datasets.
Conclusion
Luppiter Pvt Ltd successfully transformed the budgeting and planning processes for Kuwait’s largest national oil refining company by migrating from IBM Cognos EP to IBM Cognos TM1 10.2.2. The solution improved operational efficiency, data accuracy, and reporting speed, providing the company with a more agile and integrated system. With automated processes, better data integration, and real-time insights, the company is now better equipped to manage its complex budgeting cycles and ensure seamless communication between departments.