Johannesburg, 07 Mar 2006
International gold mining company AngloGold Ashanti has improved its financial consolidation and business planning capabilities with the R3.25 million investment to implement Hyperion Financial Management and Hyperion Planning over a period of time, bought from local Hyperion distributor, Intellient.
The company is using the Web-based Hyperion Financial Management solution to deliver global collection, financial consolidation, reporting and analysis; enabling subsidiaries and branch offices employees to operate with a single, unified view of key financial data.
In addition, a Web-based budgeting, forecasting and planning solution, Hyperion Planning has enabled AngloGold Ashanti to undertake cross-functional planning interaction and collaboration across the business, and to track and monitor business plans and forecasts.
"The implementation of these two solutions followed the move by our holding company, Anglo American, to Hyperion Financial Management," says Kerry-Ann Penfold, head of projects (finance) at AngloGold Ashanti. "With the amount of reporting we do into Anglo American, standardising on the same solution used throughout the entire business was the only logical route to go. That, and our own internal need to implement a solution that better served our consolidation and reporting needs, along with a flexible planning tool, saw the two Hyperion solutions being implemented during 2004."
In April 2004, AngloGold and Ashanti Goldfields merged to form AngloGold Ashanti, a global gold company with 22 operations on four continents, a substantial project pipeline and an extensive, worldwide exploration programme. The company is listed on the New York, Johannesburg, Ghanaian, London and Australian stock exchanges, and the Paris and Brussels bourses.
Prior to the implementation of Hyperion Financial Management and Hyperion Planning, AngloGold Ashanti and Anglo American were using Hyperion Enterprise. The companies had outgrown this solution and found that they required advanced global abilities. The upgraded necessities included that of a solution that is Web-based, could operate against a centralised database and provide the required multi-dimensionality for a large, global organisation such as AngloGold Ashanti. The migration from Hyperion Enterprise to Hyperion Financial Management was performed with no downtime and has provided the company with the ability to drill down into data for more in-depth investigations; perform financial consolidation and reporting in compliance with local and international regulations; undertake management, legal and tax reporting; execute complex currency translations; and integrate the solution with the company`s existing transactional systems.
The Hyperion solutions are licensed for 50 users and run against two solution servers, alongside two SQL servers, a Web server and a reporting server in the company`s Johannesburg headquarters. The North American, South American, Australian and African operations access the solutions via these central servers in South Africa.
"Today`s regulations demand a centralised financial consolidation, reporting and analysis system that ensures management understands how the operations are impacting the bottom line and what decisions need to be made to drive growth," says Marc Scheepbouwer, MD of Intellient. "With an international company such as AngloGold Ashanti, this means performing inter-company and minority interest eliminations, preventing and detecting controls, producing audit trails, doing multi-dimensional analysis and making use of flexible business rules and allocations. Hyperion Financial Management enables AngloGold Ashanti to do all of these things to produce accurate, auditable and timely financial information that helps it anticipate change, measure performance and drive profitability."
Hyperion Planning has enabled AngloGold Ashanti to centrally manage and collaborate on every step of the planning process, and communicates targets to all decision-makers via the Internet and intranet. With the solution, the company`s decision-makers create, own and communicate detailed plans, calculations and assumptions across the entire organisation.
"Using Hyperion Planning, AngloGold Ashanti consolidates plans across its business functions, allowing all layers of the business to operate in an event-based fashion," Scheepbouwer says. "Planning cycle times have been reduced, providing the company with more time to perform analysis and to proactively find new areas of opportunity."
Currently running version 3.4 of Hyperion Financial Management, AngloGold Ashanti plans to upgrade to the latest version in the last quarter of the year.
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