Due to the launch of the solution, the time and labor intensity of preparation, agreement and control over annual and operating budgets, production costs calculation were reduced, the receipt of the reliable information on the key aspects of corporate planning was accelerated, the quality of cooperation and the level of financial responsibility of the employees were increased. Odyssey Consulting Group consultants implemented calculations using different methods of linear equation systems solution within the IBM Cognos TM1 implementation in PhosAgro Group. Such solutions can be applied to calculations with cyclic dependencies that are often encountered in the tasks of calculating production requirements, production costs with redistribution of indirect costs, etc. In this project, such solutions are applied to calculate the needs for reproducible own semi-finished products, the cost of finished products, element-by-element calculation in quantitative and cost terms (i.e. reallocation to purchased ingredients of cost and quantitative needs of own semi-finished products for the production of finished products, calculated by the step-by-step method of solving a system of linear equations). "The latter task is the most resource-intensive and necessary to analyze the company's operations and make management decisions", - said Sergey Markish, head of the methodology group at the Economic Affairs Directorate at PhosAgro-Cherepovets. In the first version, the task of implementing the element-by-element calculation was successfully solved, but the duration of the calculation for one company in PhosAgro Group for one month allowed to perform element-by-element calculations only during non-working hours.
As part of the continued cooperation between the PhosAgro Group and Odyssey Consulting Group within the budgeting system development project, the customer set a task for the consultants to significantly speed up the formation of element-by-element calculations. To solve the task set by PhosAgro group, Odyssey Consulting Group integrated IBM Cognos TM1 system and R mathematical package which allowed to use linear algebra to calculate element by element calculations including matrix multiplication, solving systems of linear algebraic equations and finding the inverse matrix. All the work was completed in three weeks. Due to integration of IBM Cognos TM1 system with specialized mathematical software the time for calculation of element-by-element calculations for PhosAgro Group of companies was reduced dozens of times.
"The consultants of Odyssey Consulting Group managed to pleasantly surprise us once again," - Sergey Markish shares his impressions. - "Our terms of reference required that the formation of all element-by-element calculations for a group of companies would take no more than two hours. In reality, the whole job now takes from two to ten minutes. The Odyssey Consulting Group consultants have once again pleasantly surprised us. Our terms of reference required the formation of all elemental calculations for the group of companies to be completed in no more than two hours. In reality the entire work now takes from two to ten minutes".
"Such an increase in productivity of the budgeting system became possible thanks to the IBM Cognos TM1 system architecture, which allows the user to transparently connect the external software necessary to solve various tasks", - said Nikolai Dorogov, Odyssey Consulting Group EPM Practice Director
PhosAgro Group's plans for 2016 include further improvement of its successful budgeting and cost calculation system.