tcg - tahola press release
TRANSCRIPT
“A truly powerful management and financial tool that
our financiers have come to trust”
Background TCG is a managed pub and bar restaurant business with over 70 venues in the UK, including the famous Ta ershall Castle paddle steamer moored on the Thames in London.
The Challenge In an increasingly tough trading environment, TCG required a financial planning solu on that would enable them to maintain ght control of their cash and profit posi ons. They needed a rolling 3 year budget and forecas ng model, integrated to their General Ledgers and wanted to remove Excel from the process given its inherent challenges.
The Solu on Working closely with Tahola, TCG chose IBM Cognos Planning and asked Tahola to implement and manage their solu on. “We chose Tahola because of their technical competence and knowledge of the hospitality sector”, says Paul Bignell, IS Manager at TCG. “We set them a challenging task”. The result is that TCG now have monthly profit, cash flow, funds flow and balance sheet projec ons, all mapped to — and fed from — their monthly General Ledger trial balances. TCG’s Performance Indicators allow them to monitor actual vs budget/forecast and, says Bignell, “encourage us to sensi se our forecasts and to report variances in actual cash movements vs our cash projec ons”. TCG have a Managed Solu on from Tahola. This means TCG specified in detail what they required, using Excel
spreadsheets to demonstrate the complex calcula ons. Tahola then built ‐ and now maintain ‐ all of TCG’s financial models. This has enabled them to achieve automa c re‐forecas ng based on actual movements: profit, cash and working capital requirements at Group, Company and House level. Tahola also helped TCG to integrate Cognos Planning into its data warehouse where they maintain previous budgets and forecasts for both comparison and integra on with Epos, Payroll and General Ledger transac ons. The Cognos Planning output can then be manipulated by any Loca on a ribute.
Bignell believes robustness and flexibility are the major strengths of the Cognos Planning system. “It is the first system I would put into any company, especially where financial resources are scarce. It is a truly powerful management and financial tool that our financiers have come to trust”. “All our managers have visibility of one version of the truth — there are no hiding places in a fully integrated model. It is a truly transparent process and we now have strong control of both our profit and cash posi on”.
The Benefits
Fully integrated model and transparent process
Strong control of profit and cash posi on
Automa c re‐forecas ng
Financiers will trust a professionally built model
Robust and flexible solu on.
“Cognos Planning is the first system I would put
into any company, especially in an environment
where financial resources are scarce”
Paul Bignell, Informa on Systems Manager
Tahola Ltd, Viking House, Swallowdale Lane, Hemel Hempstead, Herts HP2 7EA
Telephone 01442 211122 www.tahola.co.uk