Astra Pharmaceuticals strives to push decision making as close to the customer as possible. Teams work on hundreds of on-going projects and their leaders have financial responsibility for their success.

Team leaders build their own budgets based on historical information, trends, and projections. The budgeting process is initiated with a bottom-up planning phase. Then management provides strategic input and presents a top-down budget. There are at least 30 iterations, each frozen and then reported upon, compared, and stored.

Astra Pharmaceuticals used TM1 to build enterprise-wide financial reporting, performance reporting, budgeting, forecasting, planning, and sales and order processing applications that support more than 50 users. Summary level data from Oracle Financials is loaded into the TM1 system on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.

According to Roberto Nogales, Executive Director of Financial Planning, "the benefit [of TM1] for the company is we can get consensus and agreement on changes to existing plans in a very quick turn around, thereby minimizing the disruption of their activities. It allows everyone to have a lot of give and take with the numbers. Both field business units and headquarters areas believe they have had input, and that their plan wasn't dictated by upper management. They feel ownership, and will strive to live with the plan. It's a win-win all around."

Because Astra Pharmaceuticals is a joint venture, the same data needs to be presented in many different formats for the owners, management, directors, and team leaders. Additionally, the basic structure of the applications evolves, adding products, projects, changing responsibility for projects, etc. The TM1 system accommodates a variety of users at all levels in the organization. Data can be tracked and reported at the natural account and project level to satisfy accounting needs, yet it is presented in English terms - the way end users understand and manage their piece of the business.

According to Donna Meilinger, Manager of Financial Planning and Reporting, once the system was implemented "All management knew was they were getting everything they wanted within seconds. I believe TM1 just gives us a lot more information - faster and easier - which makes us more competitive."