US-ANALYTICS
US-Analytics Solutions Group offers professional services to the world’s leading corporations in performance applications, operational infrastructure and continuity services. For a decade, companies have trusted US-Analytics to solve complex business problems, drive managerial excellence and deliver operational agility.
HORIZON LINES
Horizon Lines Inc. is a major American domestic ocean shipping and integrated logistics company with two primary operating subsidiaries. Horizon Lines LLC operates a fleet of U.S.-flag container ships and several port terminals linking the continental U.S. with Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, Micronesia and Puerto Rico. Horizon Logistics LLC offers customized logistics solutions, information technology, and intermodal trucking and warehousing services. The company is based in Charlotte, North Carolina.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Horizon Lines was dealing with the EPM equivalent of the overflowing filing cabinet: manually intensive spreadsheet consolidations, lack of usability of business drivers across the business units, duplicate processes, outdated systems, ballooning reporting functions. The company needed a coordinated, streamlined and automated 21st century system for web-based planning and forecasting.
- Data quantity: The firm had significantly more unique business calculations/drivers and reports than had been anticipated.
- Planning: Horizon’s process was largely decentralized which made it difficult to achieve maximum efficiencies during the annual operating plan cycle.
- Spreadsheets: The firm’s Excel models were not only manually intensive, but they differed greatly from one another, creating difficulties in employee interaction, transparency to changes in the data, and standardization of business drivers.
- Budgeting: A complex process made the overall picture difficult to articulate to executives.
ROLE OF US-ANALYTICS
Horizon required a trusted advisor who could push forward the company’s vision for a stable, reliable infrastructure coupled with a standardized business process in line with its business’s strategic direction. With that in mind, US-Analytics:
- Migrated Horizon’s Hyperion Essbase environment, which was more than three years behind in version terms, to System 9.
- Documented, consolidated, rationalized and prioritized the competing business models to deliver high value, quick ROI on the most visible models first, while setting the direction for the additional models to follow the new standard.
- Designed, built and deployed planning application for expenses and revenues.
- Created an18-month rolling forecast.
RESULTS
- One central repository for planning – “One version of the truth”
- A flexible and scalable web-based planning platform
- Standardized financial reporting
- An alternative ETL method for data integration through ODI
- Assistance with tailored training plan and instruction
- Lower-cost hardware solution and 64-bit upgrade
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