About AGI
AGI is an established British company manufacturing a wide range of instruments and systems for the Defence and Civil markets worldwide. AGI has built up a reputation over the years for high quality, well engineered products.
The Challenge
The Group Finance team faced a number of challenges:
- Using Excel for their consolidation and as a result experiencing ‘Excel Hell’ (inflexibility etc)
- There was very little time available to perform data quality checks
- Time was spent on consolidation leaving no time to analyse data
AGI implement IBM Cognos Controller
IBM Cognos Controller, a powerful financial close & consolidation software, solved all of the above challenges for AGI. Controller ably supports the close, consolidation and reporting process and enables finance teams to automate and accelerate the financial close with minimal IT support.
With the automation of the process, AGI can now spend more time on the analysis of data and other value-adding activities.
It also means that they now have a centralised system for the collection of their financial data which makes a ‘single version of the truth’ possible.
Choosing the right implementation partner
AGI selected HAYNE as it’s trusted implementation partner. One reason was the fact that HAYNE is an established IBM partner which has maintained it’s IBM Gold Partner status for many years.
HAYNE was able to provide a demonstration of Cognos Controller showing AGI exactly how they could benefit from this easy-to-implement financial consolidation application overcoming the challenges they faced while continuing to use the familiarity of Excel for reporting.
HAYNE streamlined AGI’s financial close and consolidation process and was able to host IBM Cognos Controller in HAYNE Cloud, a fully managed cloud hosting solution. Therefore, HAYNE is acting as an extension of AGI’s IT team as an external business partner. HAYNE.cloud is powered by Microsoft Azure. As certified Microsoft Gold Partners, HAYNE manages the back office technology leaving AGI’s IT team extra time to focus on core systems.
Outcome… More Automation = More Time
The implementation of Cognos Controller has given AGI greater efficiency and means they can avoid the time-consuming process of gathering, reconciling, calculating, and validating their numbers. That coupled with HAYNE Cloud means they do not face any concerns over maintaining the system.
Sam Peacock, Group Financial Controller comments:
“We enjoyed working with HAYNE throughout this implementation process. The calibre and experience of their consultants ensured the project went live on time and within budget”.