Teradata introduces Financial Management Solution to help executives meet economic challenges

Chief financial officers empowered to not only understand the health of the business, but also better forecast the future

To help executives meet today`s challenges head-on, Teradata, a division of NCR Corporation, represented exclusively in SA by National Data Systems (NDS), has introduced the Teradata Financial Management solution. Leveraging the power of the Teradata warehouse, Teradata Financial Management empowers chief financial officers to quickly understand financial results, identify trends and take action to drive business growth and profitability.

Chief financial officers are asked to do many things including providing timely information to decision makers, develop accurate forecasts to various stock exchanges, control expenses and improve asset management, to name a few. To help them to be more successful, Teradata Financial Management enables executives to analyse key financial performance indicators from top to bottom and across the enterprise`s business units.

Built from a detailed level of data, not summarised data that can be misleading, Teradata Financial Management enables the chief financial officer to gain a better understanding of profitability across a variety of dimensions, as well as to improve the management of receivables, inventory and expenses. It allows a company to manage the business using instantly available information, while reducing the time and effort required to close the books each quarter.

"In today`s fiercely competitive and dynamic business environment, we see customers using Teradata Financial Management to outsmart the competition by using financial information in innovative ways," said Simon O` Hagan, general manager, Teradata Solutions Group at NDS. "It creates the power to not only understand the health of the business as it stands today, but also better forecast where it is headed in the future."

Teradata Financial Management is an analytic architecture made up of hardware, software, professional consulting and support services. It leverages data from existing financial operational applications, integrating the data into an enterprise-wide financial data model in the Teradata warehouse. From the enterprise warehouse, executives have access to integrated information from across the organisation, providing a single, up-to-date view of the business.

Use of the Teradata Financial Management logical data model jumpstarts the Financial Management implementation because it works with nearly all existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) or legacy applications. In addition, Teradata`s extensive professional services experience coupled with strong extraction, transformation and loading (ETL), and business intelligence tool partners, allows for the development of solutions to quickly address key business improvement opportunities.

Teradata is partnering with Cognos Corporation to incorporate Cognos` analytical application best practices into Teradata Financial Management. This provides key decision makers with easy access to analysis, including how effectively a company is generating revenue, managing cash flow, leveraging assets and minimising costs.

"Financial information is the key foundation for analytic initiatives across the company," said Alan Rottenberg, senior vice president, e-Business Applications business unit, Cognos. "We are increasing the competitiveness of Teradata Financial Management customers by combining Cognos Applications` expertise with Teradata`s renowned offering."

NCR Corporation has used Teradata Financial Management to revolutionise its finance function.

"The Teradata-based enterprise data warehouse has been critical in supporting our successful transition from a country-centric hardware provider to a global solutions company," said O` Hagan. "The enterprise data warehouse provides access to more in-depth information on a more timely basis, providing the NCR management team keen insight into business results far more quickly than before and permitting consistent fact-based global forecasting."