Case Studies

Major UK Retailer: Management Information and Analysis Project

Client contact: Financial Director
Parkwell staff: 2 senior consultants

Objectives and project background

The client had an issue with management information due to:

  • A large volume of reports produced.
  • The reports were unfocused and there was little useful commentary. 
  • Management needed to identify and interpret information themselves.
  • A general lack of accountability for business performance.
  • There were a number of different systems for the production of management information.  This lead to divergent data and inconsistent reports.
  • Inconsistent definitions for measures resulting in different results
 

Anticipated Benefits

Parkwell was engaged to help the client realise the following benefits:

  • Have an agreed list of focused executive KPIs that have been bought into by all areas of the business.
  • Common traffic light report formats agreed by all areas of the business.
  • A glossary of commonly used business terms for KPI reporting developed and deployed on the Intra-net.
  • Ensure that information is more concise and better targeted to the recipients.
  • Common outlet and product hierarchy structures agreed.
  • Defined reconciliation procedures between major reporting systems and the general ledger.
  • A centralised analysis team resulting in staff savings.
 

Scope & Boundaries

  • Preparation of a glossary of terms defining commonly used business terms, how they are calculated and the source of base data.
  • Identification and definition of a set of key performance indicators (KPIs)
  • Identification of reconciliation procedures to enable the business to understand the differences between existing reporting systems.
  • Specification, design and build of a reporting mechanism to support the KPI reporting.
  • Design of an organisation structure to support the proposed reporting framework.
  • Identification of an approach to rationalise the existing management information systems
 

Deliverables

  • A style guide defining how key performance reports should be laid out
  • Agreed KPIs
  • Glossary of terms
  • A communication strategy for rolling out the glossary of terms
  • Communication material
  • Implemented reporting processes
  • Implemented reports
  • Implemented reporting process
  • Implemented reconciliation process
  • Required reconciliations identified
  • Reconciliation processes rolled out
  • Agreed planning and analysis organisation structure
  • Organisation structure to support KPIs agreed
  • Training requirements identified
  • Application Development Plan
  • Defined application architecture
  • Migration strategy
  • Plan for implementation
 

Project Conclusion

The project was deemed a success as it met the success criteria.


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