Sommet automates 70% of its reporting process with Jedox

After going through a major acquisition, Sommet Education needed to make changes to its existing structures and systems. Finance, for example, had previously conducted its performance reporting, forecasting, and budgeting in Oracle Hyperion Planning. Suddenly, it found itself with no system and no place to hold the data.

Microsoft Excel provided temporary relief but quickly reached its limits. “We were running into problems where we weren’t sure what the latest version was,” recalled Stephanie Furlough-Morris, CFO at Sommet Education. “Sometimes the links would break, or we had to break them just to make the spreadsheet manageable. The biggest problem, however, was just recognizing if we had the right data and not being able to control whether we had the very latest information between accounting and planning.”

Since the IT department was knee-deep in an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) deployment and integration projects, a heavy solution on the premises was not an option at the time. Finance set its sights on a cloud-based solution that would be easy to set up and manage. Most importantly, the department wanted to be able to administer the system on its own in the long run.

After reviewing various solutions, the team chose Jedox. Keyrus, an international expert in performance management consulting and an experienced Jedox partner, provided competent support with the project setup, timeline, and technical configuration.

The project at Sommet Education was broken down into three phases in order to produce visible results within four to six weeks. The most urgent task was building a repository to get the actuals from all institutions in one place and out of Excel. The second phase centered on forecasting and budgeting, with a repository for data input. More functionality was then added to the solution, with cash flow, labor, and revenue for actuals, forecasts, and the budget. “With Jedox, the implementation was a huge advantage. It was cloud-based. It wasn’t disruptive. We could go from easy to complex – and do it with a small team with limited internal IT help,” Furlough-Morris added.

Another key factor for choosing Jedox was its strong integration with Microsoft Excel. Today, approximately 20 controllers, members of the campus finance group, and accountants at Sommet Education work with the software. Since they use the online user interface (UI) in Jedox Web without having to give up the familiar environment of Excel, training is minimal and acceptance is high. Best of all, Finance can even administer the system or set up and monitor rules without needing IT assistance.

Jedox has given Finance the ability to respond to information requests and generate performance reports more quickly. Once the month closes, 70% of the reporting tasks are finished with a simple refresh. This gives the team more time to explore the data and understand what is happening with revenues, enrollment, and variances to the top line. Since labor comprises 50% of the organization’s costs, it also built a full cube to keep track of employees, and their location and tenure.

Jedox gives us a complete picture of our financial performance. We can pull all the information from our various systems into one solution. Before, we spent so much time putting the performance report together on time, we could not focus on what the numbers were saying.

Stephanie Furlough-Morris, CFO at Sommet Education

The Finance team at Sommet Education intends to add more metrics and functionality to its Jedox solution in the future. These plans include revenue modeling, which projects the anticipated revenues based on enrollment, pricing by program, and other pricing elements. It also wants to enhance the existing cash flow and balance sheet forecasting models with this topline information.