Knowledge smart

A customer came to us recently with a challenge – make a complex pricing tool simple, he had built one in Excel that just didn’t work anymore. The tool had been around a long time and was very popular, you know the type – lots of VBA hidden away and plenty of dialogue boxes and user forms, to drive the user through the model. And the colours. Oh, so many colours! It was probably greeted with wonder when originally introduced; somewhat predictably it hasn’t stood the test of time.

Apart from the obvious challenges that came with maintaining something passed from graduate modeller to graduate modeller over many years, there were also fundamental challenges with how it was used. Integrations to manage approvals and sign off’s didn’t work properly and portability meant confidential pricing logic could simply be walked right out of the door. It was clear that another Excel model just wouldn’t cut it. Equally we considered a new bespoke tool built from scratch – asked ourselves is this what is really needed ? In the end, we decided to use an existing platform, in a new way, to get the job done.

We chose the Tagetik Corporate Performance Management (CPM) platform. Famous as a budget, forecast, disclosure and analytics tool, it’s powerful in-memory engine, ETL module, and replication of Excel formulae and logic made it easy to re-platform and update the pricing tool. Also, the ability to run the tool as a web-app and centrally manage the model, meant user access and approvals could be significantly improved. The business logic could be secured. Out of the box, Tagetik also has a Collaborative Disclosure Management module which integrates with the Microsoft Office Suite of programs – allowing the users of the new tool to produce customer facing documents quickly, with the most up-to-date and approved pricing figures.

Our customer now has the ability to run multiple pricing scenarios in multiple geographies across numerous teams concurrently in a secure intuitive way. Use of Tagetik creates a platform on which future transformations can take place in an intuitive smart way. Talk to us about we how can help make the complex, simple, and deliver real value to your business.