The Finance Director of Engineering, NG Bailey had used a number of analytics tools in previous roles, including IBM Planning Analytics, powered by TM1.
He recognised the power that the IBM tool provided the Finance function, allowing them to guide the business strategy, rather than constantly focusing on inputting and manipulating data.
NG Bailey is the largest independent engineering, construction and services company in the UK. The company is divided into three businesses: Engineering; Services; and Infrastructure & IT Services. Lee is the Finance Director of the Engineering business.
Lee commented: “When I joined NG Bailey in 2016, there was no planning analytics tool in place. The Finance team were hand-balling information from one spreadsheet to another. This resulted in inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the data.
“Although I had extensive experience of working with different analytics tools, I was keen to implement the IBM Planning Analytics tool. From the outset I was clear about our objectives: to monitor our projects, to manage overheads, to compare our spend against budgets, and to fully understand our cost base and how we could become more efficient.
“I chose IBM Planning Analytics because it is an intuitive tool to use. After just a few weeks our team had got to grips with the tool, and were able to use it with little input from our consultants of choice, Spitfire Analytics.
“We have extended how we use Planning Analytics and now also use it to understand and manage all of our business data, including our key metrics across the business: managing people, Health & Safety, our plant, our cashflow, and our overall business performance.
“A key benefit of Planning Analytics is being able to work with the data in Excel, an environment where finance teams are always most comfortable. From there we can develop reports, which we can circulate around the business.
“Planning Analytics has helped us become a more efficient Finance team, contributing to the business in ways that we just didn’t have time to do in the past. We are now an integral part of the business and how the business makes decisions. The information that we provide is accurate and has real credibility around the business.
“Spitfire Analytics has helped us achieve this. The team are very competent technically, but it’s more than that. They understand our business; as finance professionals they understand the finance function; and they can translate all of that into Planning Analytics. They are very open and amicable, and speedy. They have been really supportive with our whole team throughout the design and implementation of Planning Analytics.
“The implementation of Planning Analytics, guided by the team at Spitfire Analytics, has brought real structure, comfort, insight and auditability to our business.”
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