Effective Planning Process In Power BI & Excel
KMG eliminates menial spreadsheet tasks and reduces their cycle for preparing global forecasts to 1 day
70%
Manual Efforts Reduced
37%
Data Accuracy Improvement
10
Person Days Saved Per Month
CMC Materials (NASDAQ: CCMP) is a global supplier of critical materials to semiconductor manufacturers and pipeline operators with revenues of around $1bn.
Challenge
To address issues of extensive preparation times and limited analytics they were looking to replace an outdated spreadsheet based planning and forecasting process.
After an extensive review of all major xP&A systems Acterys was chosen for the extremely fast implementation, unique integrations with Power BI CMC’s analytics standard and Excel, as well as lowest total cost of ownership. An initial solution was up and running after three days.
Solution
The initial step to kick off the project was a Fast Start program in CMC’s subsidiary KMG Chemicals. Within three days an initial prototype was realized that integrates KMG’s 11 ERP systems and automates the process for the collection of forecast numbers.
3 weeks later the full solution was deployed in 12 subsidiaries around the world. Users can easily enter their forecast numbers supported, with immediate insights into the implications of the assumptions and drivers directly integrated with the unparalleled analytics features in Power BI.
Outcomes
With Acterys CMC was able to cut down the time for building a model to half a day. Previously it took that time to just send a request to IT to prepare the model. Users love the ease of entering their numbers combined in conjunction with analytics features and responsive visualizations in Power BI.
All forecast submissions are directly entered in the central Acterys server and immediately available for analysis. Comprehensive governance is in place that enables administrators to exactly track any entry in the system. No time is wasted on collating spreadsheets and formula errors are a thing of the past. Khaled Chowdhury head of analytics at CMC commented on the results achieved: “Acterys brought the flexibility to work with our existing Microsoft ecosystem. At the same time, it brought automation, proven processes and governance integrated with Power BI Excel on the front-end side. Users familiar with these environments can immediately work with the system, even extending and building new models. It has really revolutionized our processes.”
“We go through acquisitions constantly that means now dealing with 11 different ERP systems.”
“Every other option was very, very expensive and rigid most of Acterys’ competitors don’t have real cloud solutions”
“We initially trialled another solution that also claimed Power BI integration but couldn’t deliver in the end. If you want data entry in Power BI – there is nothing like it”
“As the knowledge around Microsoft’s ecosystem is widely available it makes it very easy for us to maintain the solution and find qualified service providers.”
Finance Innovation in High-Tech Materials Manufacturing
“We love that Acterys brought the flexibility to work with our existing Microsoft ecosystem. At the same time it brought automation, proven processes and governance integrated with Power BI Excel. Users familiar with these environments can immediately work with the system, even extending and building new models. It has really revolutionized our processes.”
CMC Materials
Khaled Chowdhury
Head of Analytics
