The Challenge
Astaldi is an international construction group with a leading position in Italy and ranked, by revenue, among the top 100 international contractors.
Market growth and increased international investment created the need to collect and consolidate financial data from 16 countries on five continents, manage multiple currencies, analyze foreign exchange differences and associated impact and risks (i.e., hedging, multi-scenario and currency assumptions, cash pooling for operations) and revamp the cash flow planning processes from a short-term to a medium-to-long-term forecasting horizon. Moreover, the need to support top management decision-making processes with an enterprise risk management application set the challenge to create a structured risk management methodology that could also be integrated with the business processes of all groups.
This also resulted in the need for stringent analysis and control for constant monitoring of performance including foreign exchange differences, profit and loss forecasting, and scenario analysis. A key requirement was to plan cash flow at the project, company, sub-group and group levels; to generate rolling cash-flow forecasts; and to generate balance sheets by project and statements of the uses and sources of funds and invested capital.
CCH Tagetik Solution
To support these business requirements, Astaldi needed to introduce a new paradigm in the management of its performance management and financial governance challenges. Astaldi needed to streamline the global financial processes (including monthly closure, consolidation, reporting, budgeting, financial planning, risk management and executive dashboards). The organization also needed to decentralize specific financial processes at worldwide level and unify multiple business applications within a single unified software solution.
Other major objectives of the project included the ability to manage all innovations and additional reporting requirements introduced by IAS/IFRS as well as comply with Italy’s Law 262/2005 (Italian SOX); manage multi-currency consolidations; reorganize and audit on the budgeting processes; redefine key performance indicators (KPIs), identify key risk indicators (KRIs), and produce executive dashboards to support corporate strategy execution; reduce lead time; and minimize overall technical and IT maintenance costs.
Benefits
Forecasts by project
Monthly forecasts by project generation, progress monitoring and profitability indicators
Optimized decision-making process
A performance scorecard provides management with immediate insights into economic indicators
Improved business performance
Collaboration & communication at all levels, from senior executives to down to project managers
Significant reduction in manual processes
Manual effort (data entry, processing and calculation) reduced by 50%
Optimized reporting
Reporting delivered from a single source for actual and budget data as well as statutory and management data
Streamlined global financial processes
Monthly closing, consolidation, reporting, budgeting, financial planning, and executive dashboards
Customer Quote
The project resulted in an improved planning process and an improved analysis of Profit & Loss and financial position. Furthermore, the project has been the catalyst for change management within the organization, including forecasting our Profit & Loss and financial positions based on individual customer projects. This has resulted in a 50% reduction in manual processes.
Marco Caucci Molara Group Planning and Control Manager