Canon Information Systems Research Australia (CiSRA)
CiSRA Improves Resource Planning Accuracy with help from Cortell
Established in 1990, Canon Information Systems Research Australia (CiSRA) is a research and development (R&D) company with a strong focus on innovative and businessdriven research.
CiSRA is the Australian R&D centre for Canon Inc, the world’s leading provider of cameras, business solutions, and imaging and information technologies. CiSRA is charged with developing and applying new digital imaging technologies that strengthen and diversify Canon’s business.
Challenge
CiSRA had been using spreadsheets for business intelligence but this unsophisticated approach was not an effective way to plan and budget resources on a weekly and monthly basis.
“It became increasingly difficult for project managers to budget and forecast their labour, capital and other expenses,” says CiSRA IT & IS Manager Shane Youl.
CiSRA also had to address technical issues that compromised data consolidation. Because of delays, slow batch processing and manual processes, critical information was not available in a timely manner and, more importantly, was inaccurate.
To support its rapid growth, CiSRA had to revamp its workflow controls to reflect current and future requirements.
The Cortell solution
Cortell recommended that CiSRA implement a budgeting and resource planning solution based
on the Cognos TM1 platform. Cognos TM1 is a business performance management platform used in thousands of organisations globally, and is widely regarded for its ease of use and implementation.
“The main reason we engaged Cortell was the demonstrated ability to manage resources in a live environment,” said Youl. “The Cognos platform also integrated easily with a very quick back-end.”
The Cognos TM1 platform automatically connects to all back-end source systems and provides bidirectional data flows with write-back facilities for budgets and other entries.
In addition to this workflow, the system has automatic email triggers that alert managers to exception reporting and integrity checks on monthly performance tracking.
Accurate resource planning
CiSRA now has online budgeting, forecasting and dynamic labour resource planning capabilities. It can also complete up-to-date, online reporting on profit and loss, cash flow and resources, and undertake ‘what-if’ analysis and modelling with an easy-to-use analytics engine.
This has enabled CiSRA to conduct accurate and dynamic resource planning.
“Users are very happy with the speed and flexibility of the systems,” says CiSRA Financial Systems Manager Amendra Pratap. “Reporting and querying now takes one to two seconds, compared to one to three minutes in the past.”
Real-time reporting
CISRA can undertake accurate, real-time forecasting and reporting on financial data, as well as scenario planning and analysis. Real-time data integrity is maintained by using Cognos’ Turbo Integrator to update dimensions and data from other source systems.
“We were impressed with Cortell’s approach in listening to our needs to reduce the maintenance efforts usually required to ensure data integrity,” says Pratap.