Sasol has become the second company in SA to go live after upgrading from Hyperion Enterprise to Hyperion Financial Manager (HFM), the next-generation, integrated financial suite distributed in SA by GBI, the business intelligence company in the JSE Securities Exchange-listed Global Technology group.
Immediate benefits are better decision-making, direct input into its scenario-based style of management, reduction in reporting time and the ability to perform all financial tasks off one version of the truth. One of the most profound downstream benefits, though, is the ability to comply easily with the regulatory requirements of the US market after Sasol listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
Sasol is one of SA`s largest, most successful and globally representative companies, with profits of just under R15 billion on revenues of R61.5 billion in fiscal 2002.
"Reporting accurately and timeously can be a major problem in an organisation of Sasol`s size," says Peter Elstob, information manager, corporate finance at Sasol. "We needed to bring our systems under control with a simple tool that could give us very quick inputs and consolidations."
Sasol had been a significant user of Hyperion Enterprise for more than six years. However, it had reached the end of its lifecycle, and as a growing organisation operating in many regions, Sasol needed greater scalability and additional functionality, along with the workflow embedded in the new suite. "Hyperion Enterprise runs off a flatfile database, and while it had done the job for us, it lacks the multidimensionality we now need in our business," says Elstob.
The Sasol project team identified return on investment in two years through reduction of maintenance cost; optimising the relationship between financial consolidation with HFM and SAP Business Warehouse`s financial data warehouse; and eventual elimination of certain applications based on information residing in Hyperion Enterprise that would no longer be needed due to HFM.
As part of its due diligence, Sasol went on site visits to fellow early adopters Maxxium in the Netherlands and barcode giant Zebra Technologies in the US; and to PriceWaterhouseCoopers Consulting in London and Hyperion itself in the US.
The application has been delivered on three four-processor Compaq servers running Windows 2000, which fit in with Sasol`s overall architecture. Individual machines are used for database, application and Internet Information servers. Citrix was used to allow power users to train other users through remote shadowing as part of Sasol`s desire for and commitment to rapid and cost-effective skills transfer. This was a key requirement, as Sasol wanted to be able to own, deploy and extend skills throughout the organisation.
A core team of 10 made up of principal outsourcer Comparex Africa Managed Services, seconded GBI and Sasol delivered HFM from May 2002. Sasol went live on 1 November, and has trained three-quarters of its 200 defined users in the application. Users were defined at various levels:
* Senior management, which has a requirement for high-level reporting;
* Power users - those intimately involved in the application, with at least one per Sasol site: they provided key input;
* Power users in the strategic business units; and
* The actual users on the ground.
Some 200 users in all were involved across 296 entities with varying degrees of complexity, including third-party shareholding and joint ventures, 500 accounts and 12 dimensions.
Because HFM runs against Microsoft SQL Server - a relational database - maintenance and standards issues have been resolved, and HFM can generate various models and perform analysis by multiple criteria: product, geographical area, time, budget, variance, product groups and many more.
"The workflow aspect of HFM is vital in driving the process of approval of reports," said Elstob. "This enables the single version of the truth which is one of the key attractions of HFM, and ensures disciplines are enforced."
The fact that HFM is Web-designed - rather than Web-enabled - ensures it can be delivered to any Sasol operation anywhere in the world without concerns for bandwidth.
Finally, the inherent dimensionality allows the development and deployment of very sophisticated analytical applications.
Among the challenges Sasol faced were properly defined and implemented infrastructure, change management in setting goals and objectives, and perceived objectives, in particular communicating that the new technology was not a showstopper.
HFM draws its data from multiple sources: Hyperion Application Link, an Excel spreadsheet interface, a Web interface, and two SAP Business Warehouses.
Key to the success was proper and detailed scoping, and the building of a prototype, which mitigated against perceived risk.
"HFM has been a success to date at Sasol," comments Marc Scheepbouwer, CEO of GBI. "The key factors Sasol identified are precisely those which have made SA the most successful territory worldwide for HFM."
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