Concentric Solutions

A Message from Lord Pickles and Lord Blunkett, followed by Concentric Solutions's best practice article

The ability to listen and learn from one another has always been vital in parliament, in business and in most aspects of daily life. But at this particular moment in time, as national and global events continue to reiterate, it is uncommonly crucial that we forge new channels of communication and reinforce existing ones. The following article from Concentric Solutions is an attempt to do just that. We would welcome your thoughts on this or any other Parliamentary Review article.

Rt Hon The Lord David Blunkett, MP

Rt Hon The Lord Eric Pickles, MP

www.concentricsolutions.com

1CONCENTRIC SOLUTIONS |

BEST PRACTICE REPRESENTATIVE

Connected business analytics –

the route to better decisions

Executive Director David

Watson, centre, is part of a

management team that has

a collective 70 years of CPM

experience

Founded in 2005, Concentric is a business consulting and

technology firm based in London. It serves a range of clients,

from small and medium-sized multinationals to established

FTSE 100 companies, helping those across industry sectors

address their financial and operational planning, forecasting and

business reporting needs. Executive Director David Watson tells

The Parliamentary Review

how it helps customers drive better

business decisions through well-directed analytics.

Concentric began as an outsourced service supplier to Oracle Hyperion, a corporate

performance management software vendor, and over the past 14 years has evolved

into a multi-vendor solutions provider with an international base of customers. I

joined in 2007 from Hyperion, bringing with me talent from my own team. We

have 25 staff operating from London and Munich. Our focus is UK and mainland

Europe, though we also serve clients further afield.

Our approach

As software consultants, accountants and former financial controllers, the founders

of Concentric understood how dependent on spreadsheets and disconnected

technologies organisations had become. Recognising the need for better corporate

reporting, our team provides CPM strategy and advisory expertise, helping

customers define reporting requirements, select modern technologies and deliver

reporting solutions that transform data into useful management insight.

The culture of our firm centres on people: our customers and our staff. We

recognise that most clients are not looking for hero consultants that champion

FACTS ABOUT

CONCENTRIC SOLUTIONS

»Executive Director:

DavidWatson

»Founded in 2005

»Based in central London

»Services: Corporate

performance management

solutions, strategy and

advisory services and end-to-

end project delivery

»No. of employees: 25

»www.concentricsolutions.com

Concentric Solutions

THE PARLIAMENTARY REVIEW

Highlighting best practice

2| CONCENTRIC SOLUTIONS

a specific vendor offering, but

rather they want to be guided

by a trusted adviser who offers a

choice of practical solutions to key

managementchallenges.

Simplifying complexity

Size of organisation is no longer a

driver of complexity; some quite small

multinational firms face the same

operating challenges as their larger

counterparts. Firms that operate on a

global stage are exposed to shifting

market and economic conditions,

and at the same time they are

facing regulatory, compliance and

transparency pressures. Traditional

accounting concepts may not have

significantly changed, though the

overhead on internal finance teams

continues to grow. Examples of this

are solutions we have implemented

to help companies address recent

issues such as country-by-country

tax reporting and IFRS 16 lease

accounting, automating preparation

of necessary reports. However, such

external reporting needs to compete

with the requirement for timely

operational analytics. Without this,

organisations can’t hope to adapt to

change or remain competitive. This

need has resulted in a proliferation

of disconnected systems across many

organisations. It is this landscape of

disconnected reporting that makes

business users slaves to legacy

technology and processes.

The management cycle and

CPM

CPM software presents such an

opportunity for change in many

companies. These solutions sit on top

of disparate source systems, enabling

the business users to prepare, control

and report on that data. Our value-

add lies in helping to bring together

people, the process and the right

software into a more seamless and

efficient reporting platform.

We have particular expertise in helping

organisations that are going through

major mergers and acquisitions.

Implementation of new CPM-based

group reporting solutions enables

organisations to provide timely

internal and external reporting to

stakeholders post-merger without the

need for widespread re-engineering

of existing solutions. In the past 18

months we have helped a European

steel manufacturing group, a large

Anglo-US software firm, a European

waste-management group and an

international IT services group prepare

for post-merger reporting within each

of their organisations.

CPM solutions enable management

to develop strategic plans, build

operational plans and group financial

budgets (prepare for the future),

track and forecast against those plans

(monitor the present), and report on

results (record the past). This traditional

management cycle has often depended

on separate technologies. We help

our customers join those cycles

together through integration with

source systems, workflow automation,

and self-service reporting using a

choice of cloud and on-premise CPM

softwaresolutions.

Driven by our clients’

business needs and

committed to a shared

vision for project success

The culture of

our firm

centres on

people: our

customers and

our staff

“

3CONCENTRIC SOLUTIONS |

BEST PRACTICE REPRESENTATIVE

Making sense of the data

Multinational companies tend to run

several enterprise resource planning

systems and data warehousing

solutions aimed at capturing

transaction-level information. Such

systems typically have thousands, if

not millions, of records, fed by data

from across functions that are crucial

to the running of their operations.

As data volumes explode, the cost of

administering data is also growing.

Consequently, companies have invested

in business intelligence solutions that

enable presentation of analytics on ad

hoc reports and executive dashboards.

For point-solution requirements, this

is often an easy and cost-effective

approach. However, it still does not

resolve the proliferation of different

solutions serving the full management

cycle. Modern CPM solutions bring

those requirements together, with

application-based functionality for

complex accounting requirements

and reporting capabilities that provide

operational relevance to different

functions or business units across the

organisation.

The step change in more recent

CPM solutions is the single-platform

approach that enables use of the same

data for multiple purposes, thereby

ensuring “one version of the truth”.

Efficiencies gained from streamlining

workflow processes through better

integration can be huge.

As an example, one of our larger

customers runs an international chain

of entertainments attractions. What

started out as a financial reporting

solution has grown into a platform

comprising much broader business

analytics. Venue sales flow through

to internal and external reports,

supplemented by footfall analytics

that helps drive forecast revenues by

attraction, and influences the timing

and allocation of marketing spend to

encourage better business performance.

Adapting to change

Regulation and legislation are often

significant drivers for change. The

challenge for many companies is how to

address such change without bolting on

even more disconnected technologies.

This challenge presents us with new

business opportunities. Our focus has

traditionally been within the finance

domain but with clients needing more

detailed analytics in reaction to their

business environment, there is scope

for us to expand the reach of our work.

We see a trend towards pre-built data

models for domain-specific requirements,

for example, IFRS 15 revenue accounting

or IFRS 16 lease accounting regulations,

serviced from a common platform.

Similarly, the trend towards narrative

reporting requires tools that can deal

with contextual information in order

that our customers can report on

the non-financial value-drivers (for

example, intangible assets such as

goodwill and intellectual property)

that internal and external stakeholders

expect to see on published reports.

We are driven to make a difference

through our software solutions and

are investing in applications that bring

together data from both finance and

operations that reduce the cost of

reporting. Our attempt to bridge the

historical divide between business

intelligence and CPM is therefore part

of a process of pooling our expertise

and insights to allow clients to adapt

more quickly to change.

We have

particular

expertise in

helping

organisations

that are going

through major

mergers and

acquisitions

“

Members of our expert

team in London

www.concentricsolutions.com

The Parliamentary Review Publication, in which this article originally appeared, contained the following foreword from Rt Hon Michael Gove.

Rt Hon Michael Gove's Foreword For The Parliamentary Review

By Rt Hon Michael Gove

This year's Parliamentary Review comes at a momentous time for parliament, as we collectively determine the destiny of the United Kingdom.

On October 31, the UK will leave the European Union. The successful implementation of this process is this government's number-one priority.

Three years after a historic referendum vote, we will deliver on the decisive mandate from the British people. Trust in our democracy depends on it. Until that final hour, we will work determinedly and diligently to negotiate a deal, one that abolishes the backstop and upholds the warm and close relationship we share with our friends, allies and neighbours in the EU. But in the event that the EU refuses to meet us at the table, we must be prepared to leave without a deal.

As the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, it is my job to lead on this government's approach, should that scenario happen. Preparing for Brexit is my department's driving mission. But while I am leading this turbocharged effort, the whole of government is committed to this endeavour.

Ministers across Whitehall are working together to ensure that every possibility is considered, every plan is scrutinised and every provision is made. A daily drumbeat of meetings means that we are holding departments accountable, so that preparations are completed on time.

The chancellor has confirmed that all necessary funding will be made available. And we have mobilised thecivil service, assigning 15,000 of our most talented civil servants to manage our exit from the EU.

We will make sure that on November 1, there is as little disruption to national life as possible. Our trade relationships will continue to thrive, thanks to agreements with countries around the world worth £70 billion. Our country will remain secure, thanks to nearly 1,000 new officers posted at our borders. And the 3.2 million EU nationals now living and working among us can remain confident, with absolute certainty, of their right to remain in the UK.

Above all, our goal is to be transparent. Soon, we will launch a public information campaign so that citizens, communities and businesses are ready and reassured about what will happen in the event of “no deal”.

In my first few weeks in this role, I have travelled to ports and tarmacs, borders and bridges, all across the UK –from the seaside of Dover to the rolling green hills of County Armagh. I have heard from business owners and border officials, farmers and hauliers. They are ready to put an end to uncertainty. And they are ready to embrace the opportunities ahead.

Our departure from the EU will be a once in a lifetime chance to chart a new course for the United Kingdom. Preparing for that new course will be a herculean effort. But this country has made astounding efforts before. We can do it again.

Rt Hon Michael Gove
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster