Case study: Fios turns sanofi-aventis’ spreadsheet-based budgeting challenge into a smooth, automated financial planning process

30 September 2008

Sanofi-aventis, a leading multinational pharmaceutical company, has been through a number of acquisitions in the past few years. To better manage its budgeting, planning and forecasting – a process previously managed on spreadsheets – the company in 2007 partnered with financial performance management expert Fios and Cognos SA, an IBM company, for the implementation of Cognos Planning 8.1. This has provided sanofi-aventis with a centralised budgeting and planning process that saves valuable time, delivers enhanced productivity and ensures accurate data for analysis and forecasting.

The challenge

Sanofi-aventis had to deal with an enormous amount of information coming from approximately 150 cost centres. There were approximately 100 accounts attached to each as well as 100 profit centres representing numerous products and departments (eg, marketing and sales).

Explains Dusan Mitana, financial controller at sanofi-aventis: “Aggregating all our cost and profit centre budget packs was an enormous undertaking as the various departments had to populate all these centres’ information on spreadsheets. It took us more than two weeks just to create the budgeting spreadsheet templates. In addition, we had to deal with the human element, which meant that there was no sure way to determine whether all the information was accurate. This resulted in a spaghetti junction of profit and cost centres which meant we had to take multi-tier approach to aggregate the budgets.”

Sanofi-aventis thus conducted extensive research into possible solutions.

The solution

The corporate team recommended Cognos Planning 8.1 to the South African office. “Cognos was the direction most of the affiliates were heading in and it made sense; plus other affiliates were already using the product with success,” explains Mitana.

Fios was recommended as the preferred partner based on their comprehensive financial and ICT skills and the fact that they had the expertise required for such a project.

“The team at sanofi-aventis was eager to work with us and adopt the new technology. They also understood the importance of change management within the organisation,” says Desmond Botha, financial solutions specialist at Fios.

Sanofi-aventis required a speedy implementation and took a ‘tiered’ approach. “Initially we didn’t involve all the users. We focussed on users such as managers who are responsible for the cost and profit centres. This worked very well. The buy-in was positive as we simplified the process by pre-populating a lot of the data plus providing them with examples from our previous budget. This gave them a good indication of how to use the system,” says Mitana.

Fios employed its approach of ‘best practice’ and managed to complete the project within four months.

However, company ‘buy-in’ from sanofi-aventis was crucial to the success of the project. “Both sides were committed to the project and this was the cornerstone to the success of the project,” says Botha.

The benefits

Sanofi-aventis now features a centralised budget that offers one version of the truth, allowing for effective accountability and traceability. From a business perspective, the company now has a more simplistic approach to its financial processes which cascade down to the lower levels of the organisation.

“We looked at our Belgian office’s approach to Cognos and found it was very detailed. They made good judgement calls but we first wanted to address our main issues, ensuring that everybody was ‘talking the same number’. We therefore took one step back and first got rid of the risks and issues associated with Excel,” says Dusan Mitana.

In the second year after deploying Cognos Planning, sanofi-aventis was able to cut down the budget consolidation period from one month to three days, and the overall budgeting process from two months to one. 

“We now have more time for analysis. This is a big advance on our previous situation were it took so much time just to consolidate all the data that we had little time to do any form of analysis, providing us with a deeper understanding of the business,” says Mitana.

From a user perspective there is a lot of faith in the system. Subsequent to the implementation, sanofi-aventis conducted an internal survey regarding the Cognos Planning platform and found that 85 percent (95 percent of the company responded) of the respondents reacted positively to the Cognos solution.

“Change management was one of the key success factors. It wasn’t a top-down forced approach; sanofi-aventis created newsletters and provided video clips on the new system, ensuring a gradual introduction as well as demonstrating the value of the product,” explains Botha.

“The Fios consulting team’s contribution to the project was invaluable. Their knowledge of the product as well as their professional approach undoubtedly contributed to the success of the initiative. Since the implementation, Fios has assisted with support issues and handled them efficiently, making the transition from spreadsheets to an automated budgeting and planning solution so much easier.” says Mitana.

In the future, sanofi-aventis will integrate Cognos BI functionality into the reporting side of the business, further enhancing the functionality of the solution.  The company has already migrated from Cognos Planning 8.1 to version 8.3.

Fios (Pty) Ltd

Desmond Botha

Tel: 011-7935673

Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Evolution PR

Liesl Simpson

Tel: 011-4620628