Case Studies

CHEMICAL MANUFACTURING

• Developed Self-Actualizing, Integrated Forecast Reporting and Consolidation App

Issue
Client is a growing, Houston based private company. Client develops, builds, owns, operates, and sponsors petrochemical facilities. Client reports to a foreign entity parent company, while the client's business units report to client. In the critical process of forecasting production and financial performance, each entity was using their own forecasting format and forecasting tools. This made the consolidation process of the consolidated business units and the reporting to the parent company very laborious and time consuming.
Solution 
› Standardize the forecasting model based on the parent company chart of accounts and provide the standardized model to the G2X business units for production and financial performance forecasting.  
› The forecasting model is designed in Excel, using Great Plains Dynamics Management Reporter Income Statement and Balance Sheet as imported financial data sources.  
› The new Excel forecasting template auto-actualizes throughout the template converting the forecasted monthly data into an actual monthly data as part of the new import process. 
› The template utilizes published natural gas price curves to drive the forecasted revenues, nat gas costs and settlements for options and swaps. 
› Create complex mathematical custom Excel functions for Catalyst Efficiency at the production facilities, AR days and AP days for receipts and payments. 
› Standardize the management reports, and have each report auto-build/refresh
› Build custom lease computation Excel template to provide for accurate financial bucketing for IFRS reporting and long term to short term debt reclassification.
› The balance sheet, income statement and cash flow are integrated and will show the impact of changes to underlying assumptions.
› The forecasted Balance Sheet and Income Statement data in the new model is directly importable into the client’s Oracle system.

Benefits 
› This new automated data import process occurs in less than 4 seconds, replacing a process that took 8 or more hours for a single business entity.
› The forecaster can override curve driven, formula driven and inflation driven calculations to provide more accurate forecasting without destroying the Excel formulas.
› Improved cash flow projections from the use of custom AR and AP Days functions. 
› Improved production facility planning for the overhaul due to the custom Catalyst Efficiency function
> Consolidated reporting takes seconds with a click of a button.
> Parent consolidation reporting takes seconds with a click of a button.
> Forecasted data can be directly injected into their Oracle System.

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