The Financial division of insurance giant Sanlam has signed with the IBD Group for Walker Consolidation, becoming the second user of Walker`s Business Framework Series software after First National Bank.Walker will run against the Essbase multidimensional database. Sanlam has signed for a second Essbase licence, after the marketing department signed for Essbase last month.Jannie van den Berg, Sanlam senior systems planner, financial accounts, says Sanlam chose Walker Consolidation to improve its view on its various financial systems, to reduce paper usage, and to free up some of the people resources currently committed to financial consolidation. "At any of time we have up to 25 accountants working on accounts. Walker will free up some of them and also allow them to analyse the accounts and drill down to fine levels of detail."Walker was chosen for its scalability: it can cope with the large volumes of data generated by Sanlam. Currently they deal with 12 000 records, which are summarised at account level. With Walker the accountants will be able to analyse at cost centre level, four levels down. This involves 230 000 records with up to 6 million details."Walker and Essbase will act as a central repository for information," says Van den Berg. "They will allow our accountants to access data in realtime and look at it in ways they choose. They will be able to make better, more informed decisions, and all without the use of paper."
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