Challenge: The Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) process at a major rail-car pooling Enterprise in North America was cumbersome, time consuming and unreliable resulting in considerable non-value adding activities for the Finance Team.
Solution: A new FP&A solution was deployed using SAS Financial Management Server thus enabling the Finance, Equipment and Fleet groups to easily create their quarterly and yearly plans. The solution integrated various data sources and seamlessly loaded data into SAS FM data mart with various error control and data management techniques. Superior scalable design (hierarchies), security (reader and writer roles) and access control (row level, column level and object level) procedures were implemented. A comprehensive solution was provided addressing multiple modules such as Financials, Capital, Maintenance, Tax, General and Accounting and Human Resources.
Outcome:The solution improved the overall accuracy of the plans as well as reduced their Financial Planning cycle from over 8 weeks to under 2 weeks (75%).
