Longview Solutions Brings New Levels of Efficiency & Control to Consolidation, Planning and Forecasting Processes at Ingersoll Rand

The automation of data collection, improved workflow, more-flexible and more-timely reporting, and greater overall functionality have helped this global industrial manufacturing and services company achieve significant improvements in planning, forecasting and financial consolidation activities.

Benefits At A Glance

• Simplifies financial consolidation across multiple business units, improving speed and visibility
• Single database environment ensures consistent, accurate, current data for all users
• Versatile dashboards give executives timely decision-support information
• Workflow functionality improves control over data-collection processes
• Automation shortens planning cycle and saves valuable staff time and effort

A Portfolio of Industry-Leading Businesses

With roots as a construction and mining machinery maker going back to when Simon Ingersoll first patented his steam-powered rock drill in 1871, Ingersoll Rand and its family of brands have contributed to the progress of the construction and mining, industrial and commercial markets for the past 135 years.

Today’s Ingersoll Rand features a worldwide portfolio of leading industrial and commercial brands, including Bobcat compact equipment; Club Car golf cars; Hussmann stationary refrigeration equipment; Ingersoll Rand industrial and construction equipment; Schlage locks and Thermo King transport temperature-control equipment.

Ingersoll Rand employs approximately 40,000 people and operates 80 manufacturing facilities throughout the world. For its 2005 fiscal year, Ingersoll Rand revenues exceeded $10 billion.

The Challenge

At the end of 2002, the corporate finance group at Ingersoll Rand had a very difficult time conducting the year-end financial closing. Although everyone worked long and hard, they barely got it done on time. Senior management was quick to recognize that not only were their existing financial processes inefficient, their information technology tools for strategic financial operations such as consolidation were simply not effective at getting the job done.

For example, their financial system included a data-collection capability around which they had built a process for collecting, validating and reporting consolidated financial data; but the system only allowed data files to be loaded into the database sequentially. This added a lot of consolidation time to the year-end financial closing at a critical time in the process.

“Some of our locations had large files to submit,” says Chuck Diljak, Manager, Financial Reporting Systems at Ingersoll Rand. “It took the system a long time to process these files, and because they were done sequentially, it set everyone else back a considerable time.”

Even though Ingersoll Rand had a single system that could do consolidation, forecasting and planning, it used multiple versions of the database – one for capturing data in great detail for reporting actuals, for example, and another for forecasting and planning that didn’t require as much detail. Copies of the data had to be passed back and forth between the databases to keep them up to date and synchronized, adding to the complexity and inefficiency of their financial processes and creating the potential for inconsistencies in reporting due to the databases getting out of sync.

In addition, their existing system was not very intuitive and presented several different interfaces that users found difficult to understand. The company had also outgrown the existing system, and although they received regular software upgrades from the vendor, the system was based on old technology that was no longer adequate for Ingersoll Rand’s needs.

“As a result of the difficult year-end closing we experienced, our CFO and Controller challenged us to fix our financial process in time for the following year,” adds Diljak.

The Solution

Subsequent to making some improvements to their internal financial processes, Ingersoll Rand set out to select and implement a new financial system. After reviewing a number of products, they chose the Longview Performance Management Platform for strategic finance.

“We spent a lot of time analyzing and running pilot tests with the short-listed products, but when people from our various business units began to prioritize their requirements, the Longview Platform scored the highest,” says Diljak, explaining why they chose Longview. “There seemed to be at least one major problem with each of the other solutions we looked at.”

Diljak goes on to say that it was the single database that really set the Longview Platform apart from the others. Accounting and finance staff would no longer need to cross-populate multiple databases to keep them current and in sync as before; and users would not have to learn multiple applications.

“There were just so many disadvantages to working with multiple databases compared to having everyone working within the same database environment,” adds Diljak. “We also liked the ability to share reports easily amongst all the users.”

Its ability to process consolidation files in parallel, rather than limiting file submission to being sequential as before, was another reason the Longview solution was chosen; and with the Longview solution, Ingersoll Rand system administrators are able to write additional procedures without having to engage the services of Longview for all but the most complex situations. Ingersoll Rand also chose Longview for its modeling capabilities that they plan to use in a subsequent phase of their financial modernization.

With a dedicated team of high-quality, knowledgeable people from all across the organization in place, Ingersoll Rand designed and implemented its Longview Platform and mapped five years worth of historic data from the old system to the new Chart of Accounts in the Longview Platform. Including senior Longview product expertise as part of the implementation team proved to be invaluable to Ingersoll Rand, not only to assist with some of their more complex processes such as inter-company eliminations and currency translations, but also as a knowledgeable resource to go to for problem analysis and resolution ideas.

“We included Longview people on the team for their in-depth product knowledge and hands-on experience in writing the procedures that our administrators would ultimately maintain,” says Diljak.

The implementation was accompanied by a training program that combined classroom training with Longview’s e-training platform, a self-study program that users can take while at their desks. To address unique requirements, Ingersoll Rand also worked with Longview’s training team to develop four custom lessons to complement Longview’s standard e-training. With assistance from Longview, the Ingersoll Rand training team trained users in the U.S., Asia, Latin America and Europe.

When all was ready, Ingersoll Rand performed two successive month-end closings using their existing system and the new Longview Platform in parallel. Based on the successful results of these trial closings, and with signoff from all the business units, the Longview Platform alone was used thereafter. Although they initially kept their old system as back-up, they never needed it.

The Results

The Workflow component of the Longview Platform has brought greater levels of efficiency and control to Ingersoll Rand’s monthly forecasting process. Through a series of review steps, and by providing a form of ‘version management’, Workflow is providing greater control over the rollup of performance information from within each business unit. Previously, they relied on the database administrator to lock or open access to the database for specific users as a means of providing control; but now, that control is simplified and passed to the owner of the process – the business unit executive.

Previously, collecting the data to support Ingersoll Rand’s Operating Plan and Long-Range Plan processes, including information on what was driving the changes to those plans, was an intensive, manual process. With Longview, however, the data collection process is automated based on information already contained within the system, and Ingersoll Rand need only run the reports.

Ingersoll Rand is also making good use of Longview’s dashboarding capabilities, making different ones available for different user groups. For example, a dashboard set up for company executives uses familiar gauge-style indicators to show key performance metrics such as Operating Income actuals compared to forecast, and how the company stock is trading. Executives can also launch a variety of reports from the dashboard interface, such as reports for monthly operating reviews, reports related to their monthly closings and reports related to their annual Operating Plan.

“We didn’t have anything like this at all before – just hardcopy reports generated by our analysts,” admits Diljak. “The Longview dashboards offer easy-to-read, high-level business performance metrics, with drill-down capabilities in case executives want to see what’s driving the numbers.”

And finally, in response to the CFO and Controller’s challenge to fix their financial processes, Ingersoll Rand’s next year-end closing went very well using the Longview Platform compared to previous problematic closings – a much smoother process with more timely information available to decision makers.

“Achieving this goal would not have been possible without being treated as a partner, and we got that with Longview,” claims Diljak. “I’m looking forward to the next year-end closing because I expect things will be even better.”

About Longview Solutions

Longview Solutions helps companies manage the business of finance with speed, visibility and financial integrity. Since 1995, hundreds of the world's most respected companies including Boeing, Cisco, GE Healthcare, Home Depot, Ingersoll Rand, JC Penney and many other industry leaders have used our software to create a single repository of financial truth from which Consolidation, Management Reporting, Corporate Planning, Modeling, Analysis, Budgeting, Forecasting, and Tax processes can be performed simultaneously, enterprise-wide.

Longview Solutions has a focus on finance, and expertise that covers all industry sectors including energy, natural resources, media and entertainment, financial services, healthcare, higher education, manufacturing, pharmaceutical and retail. For more information go to www.longview.com.