TM1 Case Study

iXL, Inc.

Accelerating Strategic Internet Services

Background

"We had two very different criteria that were critical in our selection of TM1," noted iXL's Chief Technical Officer, Benjamin Chen. "We had an immediate, tactical need to support consolidated reporting across all the companies in the enterprise before going public. We also had a longer-term, strategic objective to provide senior management with an effective executive information system and to develop an architecture on which to build a strategic data warehouse."

Meeting Tactical Needs to Accelerate Mergers & Acquisitions Integration

Consolidated reporting is required by the Securities Exchange Commission. Before TM1, end-of-month reporting was done manually by each company, with almost 40 people working over-time to produce the individual financial statements. With TM1, iXL requires each of its offices immediately to report summarized financials according to the iXL chart of accounts. Individual companies continue to submit spreadsheets until they successfully adopt the iXL standard accounting system.

Fast deployment was essential. So iXL and its integrator, Creeth Richman & Associates, developed an analytical model that automated spreadsheet consolidation and integration of general ledger data. They created two implementation teams: the first developed the OLAP warehouse, and the second carried out the company conversions. That TM1 is installed from two diskettes and requires no customized programming was crucial, as was its immediate integration with Excel. "With the model to create and conversions to do, iXL did not have time to spend on the product," explained Richard Creeth, CEO of Creeth Richman & Associates. With just three staff and two consultants, who mapped and normalized the data sets, iXL implemented the warehouse, with consolidated reporting, in 30 days.

Today, TM1 allows iXL to generate consolidated, monthly, enterprise-wide performance reports easily. Manually created spreadsheets, and associated overtime, were eliminated. A major benefit is that reports can be run anytime, even on an ad hoc basis; the underlying data can be used in "what if" analyses. Also, because TM1 can be run on the server or stand-alone, the data is "mobile"; iXL executives can load GL information on laptops and do modeling, analyses, and projects on the road. Moreover, each new company that iXL acquires can be integrated into the data warehouse in 30 days.

A Strategic Solution

iXL's solution is enterprise-wide. Functionally, it provides a statutory consolidation system, a budget/forecasting system, and a central data warehouse from which to disseminate management and other business-critical information. On a business level, the solution facilitates the corporation's integration strategy, provides an executive dashboard of performance metrics, and integrates all units and staff within the enterprise. And iXL is leveraging its intranet to provide comprehensive regional and global access, anywhere, anytime, in local currency or USD.

iXL's solution provides management with both real-time analytics and the ability to view and manipulate data in any way that it chooses. TM1's robust capabilities allow users to slice and dice information and perform on-demand calculations from any location in the company. iXL executives use TM1 as a graphical dashboard of corporate performance, drilling down from consolidated figures to see underlying detail data for each unit of the operation by region, function, and resource, as well as to view revenue figures. CTO Chen noted, "Being able to present our CEO with a consolidated dashboard view of the operations for the entire enterprise is vital to managing our multiple locations effectively. It was not simple, but it could be done well and quickly with TM1."

TM1's flexibility continues to accelerate iXL's integration strategy. "We wanted to empower people to work more effectively, not just give them reports," cited Chen. "We needed managers to understand that they had real-time data available to them." And TM1 fosters "self-evident best practices." Regional managers can see their results in the context of the corporate one-and share ideas on achieving success. "Managers can see quickly that sales of a certain product are increasing or that the cost of goods sold is increasing or decreasing at a particular rate-anywhere in the enterprise," added consultant Creeth. By integrating remote operating units, TM1 has helped iXL both to achieve economies of scale and to create the basis for enterprise-wide business intelligence.

The iXL solution leverages its intranet, providing users worldwide with secure access to the central server. What makes the solution unique is that it removes the barriers to information access, while retaining centralized control. Data integrity is maintained, and the business analytics are available in real-time to key individuals within the corporation. TM1 is merged seamlessly with the front-end processes and the application meta-data, so that the OLAP technology is transparent to the user. And, as TM1 is OLAP OLE DB compliant, iXL now has a standard multi-dimensional data warehouse that can interface with other tools inside the organization.

ROI is "Enhanced Decision-Making"

iXL did not make a formal return on investment analysis. Given the size of Chen's team, the labor savings, and the low cost of TM1, "our ROI was off the charts," he noted. In addition, because TM1 can be engineered to solve multiple problems-consolidation, budgeting, forecasting, revenue analysis-purchasing additional applications is unnecessary, and on-going costs are minimized. More important in the long-term is the positive impact on productivity and decision-making. Stated Chen, "Although there were undisputed cost savings, the real return on investing in TM1 lies in our ability to make more accurate, faster decisions."

Innovative Technology To Support Corporate Acquisition

iXL adapted TM1 to meet its business needs: the model and data are company-specific, with due diligence, other M&A data, and department data on top of the analytics. "Using flat files or SQL ODBC connectivity, the TM1 multi-dimensional database can hold snapshots of financial data, project information, and human resource metrics from multiple data sources," stated Chen. "We can even measure the effectiveness of product and account managers or analyze turn-over rates." The solution supports data calls, queries, sensitivity and "what-if" analyses, ad hoc reporting, remote access, currency conversions, and integration with spreadsheet programs. It has saved "countless hours" of data rekeying and associated errors. iXL's solution has met the tactical objective of consolidated financial reporting, while laying the foundation for long-term strategic data warehousing.