How a leading Fintech company, super charged their Excel based FP&A processes with IBM Planning Analytics.

IBM Business Analytics Solution – IBM Planning Analytics

Services – Consultancy

Founded in 2000, Pirum is a fintech company that specialises in helping the securities finance and lending sector automate post-trade services. The company’s customer base includes over 100 financial institutions, including investment banks, asset managers, pension funds, insurance companies and agent lenders.

What challenges were Pirum facing?

Pirum’s financial planning and analytics (FP&A) processes were built on a complex, spreadsheet-based model. As the business developed, it became increasingly difficult for them to manage their FP&A within a spreadsheet model.

We worked with them to scope out the project and begin building a new model in Planning Analytics that would automate as much as possible. We sped up the process with our Fast Financials solution, which helps by pre-configuring some of the initial dimensions and settings out-of-the-box. That’s important, because although Planning Analytics is very flexible, it does expect you to build a lot of things from scratch.

Results

By the end of phase 1, Pirum were able to:

Manage access control
Manage version control
Produce different versions of the budget
Analyse different what-if scenarios
Make changes to the model in a transparent and explainable way
Automate many previously manual tasks

After Planning Analytics was installed, Pirum’s Financial Controller could spend 30% more of her time answering questions for the business instead of just processing numbers. As Pirum build more user interfaces, managers will be able to get more information for themselves. This will mean that managers will have even more time to focus on the value-adding activities.

Integration was one of the most important items for phase 2. Pirum want to get the data flowing directly from their Oracle NetSuite ERP system into Planning Analytics. This would will make their whole process more robust and automated.

Pirum Feedback

Aramar really understood what we were looking for, and their consultant Lindsey is great to work with. The Aramar team has a real can-do attitude, which gave us the confidence to move forward with the project, and they have the skills to back it up.