Business Intelligence and Performance Management Solutions

Let's face it: In this new world, information is king. Having the right information, at the right time, in the right place, enables you to make better business decisions. Business Intelligence is about extracting useful insight from your organization's raw data quickly and easily.

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Do you have the following information at your fingertips?

• Which of my products is most profitable?
• Which products are least profitable but have the highest pull-through?
• How are sales trending in stores that have been open for at least two years, where there is a competing store within a two mile radius?
• What product lines have upward revenue trends and which customer group[s] purchase those products?
• What characterizes the top 10% most profitable customers?
• Who are the most profitable customers among those who have made purchases greater than two standard deviations above the average for the last six months?

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MCI's Business Intelligence solutions can enable you to:

• Increase sales
• Deepen customer relationships and build customer loyalty
• Build better products
• Provide better services
• Streamline operations
• Reduce costs
• Make better, smarter decisions
• Increase revenues

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Utilising a combination of tools including Microsoft and IBM Cognos's TM1™ multidimensional database, MCI has an impressive track record of implementing business intelligence solutions:

• Financial Performance Management within the Banking industry
• Interactive Budgeting & Planning
• Financial Reporting & Consolidations
• Forecasting
• Sales & Market Analysis
• Pricing
• Project Cost Reporting
• Financial Modelling
• Corporate Performance Management

You can only make intelligent business decisions if you have the relevant information at your fingertips. Eliminate the guesswork with MCI - undoubtedly the intelligent choice!

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Planning for Performance

In challenging, competitive business landscapes it is vital for any organization to have the means to anticipate results and react quickly to changing conditions in order to drive optimal performance.

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This means:

• Fast turn-around on your budgeting and forecasting processes
• Clear and easy alignment of top-down strategic goals and bottom-up operational plans
• Wide participation in the budgeting process to ensure accountability
• Driver-based techniques to ensure transparency and create flexibility
• What-if and scenario analysis capability to test changing assumptions
• Breaking out of the annual budgeting cycle and moving towards continuous planning
• Producing accurate results which you can trust

Yet many organizations today make use of manual or spreadsheet-based budgeting processes.  These processes are usually time-consuming, with a proliferation of spreadsheets keeping your finance team busy until late into the night.  Alternatively, budgets are constructed or amended without input from all stake-holders, resulting in a lack of accountability for actual results.

Is your organization facing any of these challenges?

• Tedious, time consuming budgeting processes?
• No ownership and accountability for the final budget?
• Difficult to adjust budgets to suit changed assumptions?
• Difficult to explain how results were arrived at?
• No confidence in the final reports?

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MCI can help your organization get on top of your budgeting and forecasting process

MCI has extensive experience in implementing best-practice collaborative planning solutions for businesses in various industries.  Deploying IBM Cognos, SAP BusinessObjects or specialized custom tools, our consultants can help you:

• Automate your planning process and reduce turn-around time for budgets and forecasts.
• Manage simultaneous top-down and bottom-up planning processes, helping you to align strategic and operational goals.
• Implement highly collaborative, zero-based planning solutions with best-practice input templates to facilitate contributions from across your organization.
• Drive collaboration between functions through automated transfer pricing and inter-divisional transactions.
• Implement driver-based planning solutions to connect results to business drivers and ensure the transparency of the end result.
• Set up sophisticated what-if and scenario analysis models to test assumptions against your budgets and forecasts and adapt your business to changing conditions.
• Easily create multiple versions of a plan each with its own set of assumptions and results
• Broaden your horizon by migrating to a continuous planning environment.
• Produce timely, reliable plans.

Contact us today to find out how we can help your organization plan for performance!

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Financial Performance Management in Banking

Performance Challenges in the Banking Environment

With increasing competition in the market place, unpredictable market conditions, and the ever-accelerating pace of business, banks today need to be able to adapt and change course faster than ever before.

Banks, more so than other businesses, are required to continuously manage risk:  A bank’s reason for being is to accept structured uncertainty and manage the associated risk with a goal to capitalize on the risk differences and turn a profit.

Already burdened by complex regulatory requirements such as Basel II, IFRS and Sarbanes-Oxley, bank losses due to exposure to securitised asset portfolios are likely to result in more legislation, and an increasing focus on risk management.  Globalisation and cross-border consolidation, while offering measurable business benefits, also impacts on risk.  As a result, the ability to share and verify information is more critical than ever before.

Changing customer behaviour patterns including decreased customer loyalty and ever-increasing service demands, means that banks are facing an even more challenging road going forward.  Retaining customers requires investing in new services and technologies, which the bank is required to balance against managing operational costs and the exposure to the risks arising from these new initiatives.

The successful navigation of these risks whilst optimizing returns requires a flexible, comprehensive business performance management process.

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The Business Performance Management Process

The business performance management process revolves around three core areas:

Gaining insight and understanding into the business:

 In order to manage performance, the business first needs to understand key performance drivers.  Ultimately, managing the key performance driver will translate into managing performance.

By studying past performance, and correlating past decisions and inputs to bottom-line performance, analysts can gain insight into the most likely drivers of success and establish appropriate indicators.  These drivers must then be aligned with the strategic goals of the business, so that they can be used to inform the planning and monitoring processes.

In the banking environment, some of the key drivers are customer assets and liabilities, and their corresponding interest margins. This together with non-interest income provides a reasonable picture of the bank’s revenue prognosis.

Methodologies such as matched-funds transfer pricing, can then be utilised from a strategic perspective to drive growth in appropriate areas and ensure a sufficient inflow of customer deposits, and can help to maintain a healthy balance sheet and ensures consistent client yields.

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Planning for performance:

Moving from a traditional balance sheet and income statement planning process to a driver-based view means that planning can become an intelligent process.  Bottom line results can be forecast with increasing frequency and accuracy by merely adjusting the variables to the planning process.

Rolling, driver-based budgeting and forecasting processes eliminate traditional guesswork, and the impact of, for example, a central bank rate adjustment can be visible instantly in the business plan.

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Measuring and Monitoring:

Key performance indicators and dashboards can now be utilised in addition to standard reports to measure and track performance against prior periods and plans.  Problem areas can be quickly identified and addressed.

A successful measuring and monitoring strategy ties key performance indicators from the operational level right through to strategic initiatives.  Indicators of new cheque accounts opened in a retail branch connect through the various levels in the organization right through to a growth indicator at a strategic level.

The performance management process is iterative, and the findings and results from each should be used to inform the next process.

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Requirements for Successful Performance Management

In order to successfully apply the principles of performance management, the bank needs to have the correct tools in place to facilitate the three core questions.  These tools need to meet certain requirements:

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Reliable Data

• The foundation of good performance management is a reliable set of financial information that is generated automatically and reconciles with operational transaction systems, providing clear accountabilities for profit and cost centers.

Reliable Measurement Tools

• There needs to be a clear definition of everything the organization wants to measure, and an understanding that there may be different views of the data required to comply with different consumers: management accounting, statutory reporting, etc.
• There is a need to develop reliable measurement tools that cover financial targets, customer views, business processes, technology, human capital and their relationship to return on capital. 

Appropriate Access for All Levels of Management

• Ensuring that all participants in the process have appropriate and timely access to information is critical.  Access should preferably be online to enable better and faster decision making as well as timely and consistent measurement of results.

Effective Planning Tools

• Planning tools and processes should enable effective linkage between departments, lines of business and the enterprise to eliminate dysfunctional manual steps and provide integration between strategy formulation, business planning and execution.
• In particular, calculations such as consolidation of business units, transfer pricing between business units, calculation of funds transfer pricing and interest margins should be automated and driver-based, eliminating manual errors and time-consuming reconciliation processes.
• An effective tool will also include workflow to aid the planning administrator in managing deadlines in a high-participation planning process.

Analytical processes and tools

Development of the analytical processes and tools to explain variance against plans, to test “what if” hypotheses and “recover” scenarios to improve decision making.

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Our Solutions for Banking

MCI has a track record of implementing successful planning and reporting applications for a number of banks and financial institutions around the African continent, including South Africa’s largest commercial bank.
Contact us to find out more about how MCI can help your organization take charge of the financial performance management process.

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Recruitment Solutions

MCI is proud to be associated with Bond International Software, who have offices in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Hong Kong and Australia, and are the developers of the highly successful Bond Adapt System - the market choice of many of the largest and most well respected personnel organisations in the world. As the local distributors of AdaptRecruitment, we've been implementing the software since 1995 and our list of satisfied recruitment agency clients include South Africa's foremost personnel groups.

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We have successfully implemented the Bond Adapt system for:

• Temp Workforce Management
• Permanent Placements
• Contract Management
• Executive Search
• Response Handling
• HR Recruitment
• Vendor Management
• Recruitment Process Outsourcing

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Currently, we provide the following products and support services to the Staffing and Recruitment industry:

• Implementation of Bond Adapt to manage candidate, client and job order records. It is widely regarded as the best system for this purpose, locally as well as internationally.
• Customising Bond Adapt to suit your business' unique needs.
• Integration of Bond Adapt with accounting and payroll systems.
• Design and implementation of websites with integration to the Adapt system for online candidate registrations, online advertising of candidates and job specifications.
• Implementation of Bond Talent, which is a powerful and versatile web-based application specifically developed for corporations who wish to streamline their in-house recruitment processes and save costs.

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When it comes to adding value, we do the job like no other. We have:

• An in-depth knowledge of the recruitment industry, thanks to years of experience in the field.
• A thorough understanding of payroll requirements.
• Innovative ideas to move your business into the new age of technology.
• The skills to make ideas reality!

With our vast knowledge of the recruitment industry and access to the best software options in the world, you need look no further for the right candidate.

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Stock Broker Solutions

As a JSE accredited supplier, MCI has served as a primary IT solutions provider to the stock broking community since 1992 and is today considered to be at the forefront of the industry.

At MCI we recognize that all of our clients have specific needs, which is why we are in the business of developing and tailoring solutions to meet specific requirements. This business approach is summarized in our policy of "if you need it and it doesn't exist, we'll create it for you".

Our key differentiator in the market is that we provide customized solutions to suit our clients' changing requirements at affordable prices.

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With over 15 years experience in the financial services industry, we are able to offer a range of solutions to the JSE Stock Brokers:

• Implementation of the ACCPAC range of accounting software.
• A BDA to ACCPAC Interface
• Implementation of the IBM Cognos TM1 business intelligence tool for management reporting
• Software development - with our rapid application development methodology, we are able to meet a client's needs in a short a time as possible.

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Our products in a nutshell:

Tradecis:

TradeCIS, our customized trading system that has been designed according to the JSE/LSE specifications and which incorporates the relevant JSE rules and legislation, facilitates trading on SETS.

Portcis:

PortCIS is our portfolio management system developed to assist portfolio managers with the management of their accounts.

Netcis:

NetCIS is a web-based solution which integrates with TradeCIS and PortCIS to offer up to date market information, as well as personal portfolio valuation and performance calculations, and facilitates on-line trading. What's more, brokers can also publish daily updates on market developments.

Mobile Trading:

Mobile Trading provides streaming market data and online trading capabilities for wireless platforms.

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Other modules include the following:

Unitization module facilitating the unitization of funds
Eqis equity information software
Basket Trading Module which facilitates the execution of equity baskets
News Module which automatically e-mails JSE SENS messages to clients when the messages are issued

API's are available on all our products which allows for seamless integration with other systems.

What's more we provide the option of a monthly rental basis for our software which dramatically reduces costs, not to mention the risk factor.

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We pack ACCPAC with added value

When you choose to have ACCPAC installed by MCI, you're not just getting mind-blowing software. You're getting 15 years experience implementing ACCPAC systems, with more than 500 installations done speedily and efficiently.

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Accpac

As you may or may not know, Sage ACCPAC is the global leader in providing business management solutions for the mid-market - from small businesses to corporate enterprises. In fact, ACCPAC's installed base includes more than 550 000 registered clients in over 100 countries worldwide, and has a vast network of well-trained and experienced business partners, of which MCI is one.

As a partner of Sage ACCPAC, we have the connections and the clout to give you first-class ongoing support. We're proud of our staff's exceptional accounting skills, and put it to good use implementing this invaluable software and training your staff to get the best out of it. We will even assist you in putting accounting controls in place to keep the system running seamlessly.

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Turnkey solutions to suit your specific needs.

With customer satisfaction the only way to measure our success, we always strive to give you what you require, plus a little bit more. Which is why we make it a priority to deliver solutions to fulfill your unique needs. For instance, we'll set up ACCPAC to suit your company's special requirements, write reports customised for your needs and interface ACCPAC to other strategic systems if required.

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What we can do for you:

At MCI, we regard the development of ground-breaking software for specific business needs our forte. We have innovated many products for the financial and recruitment industries, as well as exciting e-Commerce solutions. We can and want to do the same for you.

Whether you're striving to stay one step ahead of your competition, needing specific software to do a job more efficiently or simply extending the capabilities of your existing system, MCI offers total business solutions.

• The e-commerce industry has grown substantially over the last few years. If you need to set up an e-commerce facility, MCI's development team is your passport to this virtual world.

• Mobile Solutions are now where e-Commerce technology was a few years ago. MCI is at the forefront of the trend, designing mobile solutions that work with a variety of applications such as mobile portals, online trading and wealth management, and customer relationship management.

If you can imagine it, we'll strive to develop it for you. And although we're proud of our short turnaround times, we also offer you a monthly rental option to minimize your risk and save you money.

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Network and Communication Services

MCI offers professional expertise in networking and I.T. support services to provide for your business and technology requirements. We will always provide you with a free initial consultation and then work with you to best meet your needs.

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Our services include:

• Network Integration Services
• Network Consulting & Architecture
• Specialised Network Support
• Network Design, planning & installation of integrated networking solutions
• Desktop and Network Management
• Network cabling
• Office automation, including the setup of e-mail and network fax solutions
• Installation and setup of web servers and web application servers
• General software support
• Preventative maintenance service on hardware
• Anti-virus solutions
• Hardware supply

We support the whole spectrum of operating systems from Windows right through to Novell, SCO Unix and Linux.

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