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Transforming Financial Reporting: A Case Study on Canadian National Railway Company
Technology Category
- Analytics & Modeling - Big Data Analytics
- Sensors - Level Sensors
Applicable Industries
- Consumer Goods
- Finance & Insurance
Use Cases
- Inventory Management
- Time Sensitive Networking
The Challenge
Canadian National Railway Company (CN), a major economic player transporting over CAD250 billion worth of goods annually, faced a significant challenge in its financial reporting process. The company's accounting team was burdened with increasingly complex accounting standards and internal demands, making financial reporting labor-intensive. The team was responsible for generating a variety of reports, including quarterly and annual regulatory reports, internal monthly statements, and executive analysis. However, many of these processes were spreadsheet-based and had reached their limits. The team was spending more time on low-value activities such as data collection and performing repetitive tasks, which was inefficient and took away from more value-added tasks like analysis.
About The Customer
Canadian National Railway Company (CN) is a major economic backbone, with a team of approximately 25,000 railroaders transporting more than CAD250 billion worth of goods annually for a wide range of business sectors. These sectors range from resource products to manufactured products to consumer goods. CN operates across a rail network of approximately 20,000 route-miles spanning Canada and mid-America. The company's accounting team is responsible for generating a variety of reports, from quarterly and annual regulatory reports to internal monthly statements and executive analysis.
The Solution
CN embarked on a transformational project to reinvent its financial reporting process. In partnership with IBM Lab Services and Prolifics, an IBM Premier Business Partner, CN built a sophisticated solution that integrated financial data with in-depth analytics, using IBM® Cognos® TM1® and IBM Cognos Disclosure Management. The solution automatically integrated up-to-date data from CN's ERP and financial systems into an IBM Cognos TM1 environment in nightly batch jobs. It also included a TM1-based web interface that allowed power users to load data on an ad-hoc basis, collect statistical data and third-party information, and perform any analysis on the data as part of the disclosure process. CN also built a customized workflow and dashboards that broke down silos between functions, improving collaboration and visibility across the entire disclosure management process.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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