Client Case Studies
Financial Reporting
The Customer
The finance team at a leading b2b information provider.
The Challenge
The European CFO was receiving monthly P&L numbers in a set of spreadsheets. This included the actual numbers for a variety of cost and revenue lines comparing these to the previous year's numbers and budgets, with variances put in. Monthly and year-to-date information was included on the spreadsheet along with P&Ls for 12 regional offices, 15 business practices and 18 support areas.
This process took several days and employed several analysts. The team would examine the data to find anomalies enabling the CFO to go back to the relevant business unit to understand the drivers of their performance.
The Fractal:Edge Solution
Initially we deployed Fractal:Intelligence, with projects based on the specific requirements of the CFO. The original spreadsheets are used to create an easily understood map. Using colour coding, the CFO is now able to quickly pinpoint areas of concern or success enabling the team to review the monthly performance analysis, using no other resource, within two hours including all relevant calls to the business units. Following the initial success of the Fractal:Intelligence deployment, Fractal:Server has been deployed to enable business unit heads around Europe to access the same data.
The Result
- Understand key drivers of the financial performance instantaneously
- Save time and resources - a two day process has been shortened to a couple of hours
- Communicate findings more efficiently and effectively with colleagues
- Closer, better-informed control of the business
By moving your mouse over a circle and "hovering" over it (by keeping the mouse still) for a short time, you will see labels appear to show you the titles of the page you are hovering over (at 12 o'clock) and the pages it is linked to.
In addition, the Fractal Map will show a "crumb trail" for the page you are viewing by highlighting the relevant circles in red. The smallest red circle represents the page you are viewing and any "parent" pages higher up in the website structure will also be highlighted red showing you the route you would take to reach the page. Note that the homepage itself is never coloured red in this way.
