MCI enhances its long-standing relationship with Absa

Issued by Global Research Partners for MCI
Johannesburg, 15 Sep 2008

MCI Consultants, the leading distributor for Cognos/Applix's TM1 product in Africa, today announced that Absa, one of South Africa's largest commercial banking groups, had embraced TM1 to assist with its group budgeting activities.

"As with any modern organisation, financial performance management is a critical success factor within our group, which consists of a diverse set of business activities and divisions," commented Eric Wasserman of Absa. "Not surprisingly then, our budgeting and forecasting processes are cumbersome and time-consuming to co-ordinate and consolidate, and thus it was an issue we urgently needed to address."

"We needed a solution that could be implemented quickly to assist in the co-ordination of the budgeting process, and automate a number of aspects of the budgeting calculations and consolidations," continued Wasserman. "The proposed TM1 tool with Planning Manager met this requirement and within two months we had the functionality needed to allow us to complete our three-year forecast."

The system was implemented and utilised by over 100 users across as many business units. In addition to basic key performance indicators, some of the calculations TM1 was called on to provide included transfer pricing, matched funds transfer pricing calculations, funding and capital allocations. In addition, by automating these calculations, which involved inter-divisional transactions, the need for a time-consuming reconciliation of individual budgets was also eliminated. As a result, TM1 was able to produce accurately consolidated and calculated reports instantly, a capability which previously took several days.

"We have been involved with both Barclays and Absa for some time and the above is another example of the flexibility, ease of use and rapid implementations that users of TM1 continue to experience," concluded Aliki Droussiotis, Director of MCI Consultants. "As a direct result of the acquisition of Applix by Cognos and now the latter by IBM, we are now in a very strong position of being able to offer a wider and improved portfolio of solutions for our clients."

For further information, please contact Aliki Droussiotis, MCI: tel 011 454-3420, fax 011 454-3417, or e-mail aliki@mci.co.za.

Cognos

Cognos, a world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions, provides world-class enterprise planning and BI software and services to help companies plan, understand and manage financial and operational performance.

Cognos brings together technology, analytical applications, best practices, and a broad network of partners to give customers a complete performance system. The Cognos performance system is an open and adaptive solution that leverages an organisation's ERP, packaged applications, and database investments. It gives customers the ability to answer the questions -- How are we doing? Why are we on or off track? What should we do about it? - and enables them to understand and monitor current performance while planning future business strategies.

Cognos serves more than 23 000 customers in more than 135 countries, and its top 100 enterprise customers consistently outperform market indexes. Cognos performance management solutions and services are also available from more than 3 000 worldwide partners and resellers. For more information, visit the Cognos Web site at http://www.cognos.com.

MCI Consultants

MCI Consultants is a South African-based business information systems consulting firm specialising in providing software solutions to the business community, specifically to the financial services and personnel recruitment industries.

They offer complete solutions, including accounting systems (ACCPAC), business intelligence solutions (Applix/Cognos) and recruitment solutions (AdaptRecruitment), as well as bespoke developments, including software for the JSE stockbrokers, including Trading and Portfolio systems that also incorporate e-commerce and mobile technologies.

MCI has specialised in providing business intelligence solutions, utilising TM1 and Microsoft technologies for over a decade. It has a proven track record of successfully implementing the business intelligence solutions within the banking, staffing and airline industries. Its approach is to continuously provide solutions to meet its clients' changing requirements. It prides itself in delivering excellent customer service and building long-lasting partnerships with its clients.

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