Sanmargar implemented a system of operational controlling support in the area of planning and budgeting processes for the EU’s biggest coking coal producer. The implementation involved the design of a complex planning model, describing complex processes involved in coal mining and processing, as well as its creation using Oracle Hyperion Planning technology. Our work reflected the need for planning and subsequent monitoring of not only financial measures, but also a whole set of operational measures associated with effectiveness, efficiency or safety at work.
The designed and implemented internal cost allocation mechanism (cost of services provided by auxiliary business units to mining, preparatory & reinforcement and liquidation functions) made it possible to optimize resources already at the stage of preparation of the annual budget. Thanks to the automation of numerous processes, including those in the area of balance sheet and income statement planning, as well as the rearrangement of the process and elimination of the existing manual and duplicate planning processes, more detailed planning was achieved, as well as a saving of time needed for the preparation of the annual budget. The capability to easily create different scenarios, depending on the adopted input parameters, was also achieved.
Full auditability of the process, with the planning history available at any time, including comments and a trail of budget rejections or correction requests, brought about a significant increase in the accountability of those responsible for planning inputs. Significant data quality improvement in single-area systems was an additional effect – thanks to the integration with the planning system, causes of data errors were detected and eliminated (for example, accounting outside of the periods of validity of objects – registration of expenses on discontinued drifts, etc.)
The proprietary Sanmargar Metastudio solution applied during the implementation assists the system administrators in the management of data input and processing. Whereas, system users are made independent from administrators and IT personnel and may manually change the mapping of accounts or business units from the source systems and appropriate accounts or budgetary units.
