InfoCat: Strengthening the Financial Backbone of Companies

Stephen Waters, MD

While leafing through the pages of history, the evolution of accounting comes across as a fascinating and colourful tale. The genesis of business and accounting dates back to the days when civilisations in the wood and stone cities of Mesopotamia and Egypt used clay tablets for recording financial transactions. Since then, inventors and visionaries have paved the way for new and enhanced methods of account keeping. This race for improvement hasn’t slowed even the slightest in the 21st century. Among the innovators, at the helm of this evolution is InfoCat— a Financial Performance Management consultancy, serving finance departments throughout the UK’s private and public sectors.

The company focuses exclusively on the delivery of IBM performance management solutions, with deep expertise in IBM Cognos TM1/Planning Analytics. It essentially works with finance teams to implement applications for their financial reporting and consolidation, budgeting and forecasting, financial risk management, predictive analytics, and more.

With specialists who were accountants themselves, the company has lived through the nightmare of trying to use spreadsheets to manage the financial performance of an enterprise and plan the future. This enables InfoCat to better understand the challenges in the accounting realm and deliver optimal IBM performance management solutions. Recognised as one of the most knowledgeable IBM Planning Analytics TMI team in Europe, InfoCat helps finance departments implement systems to plan, monitor, and model their organisation’s performance.

InfoCat relies on its full range of services from design through to development and training, an enviable reference list of long-standing blue chip clients, and a dedicated support desk to provide both standard software support and more sophisticated application support where required.

Using templates that can be tailored to clients’ specific needs and application, the company focuses on an agile approach to ensure fast and reliable deployments, helping enterprises to hit the ground running.Expert design, thorough testing, and a comprehensive set of Planning Analytics/TM1 training courses–InfoCat infuses its robust solutions assures of customers of a successful project delivered on time, on budget, and as promised–resulting in lower total cost of ownership.

To that end, the company incorporates advanced integrated Budgeting and Forecasting toolset that utilises dedicated software that not only easily overcomes spreadsheet issues, but also effortlessly enables all key business systems to be integrated for financial and operational plans across the organisation. As part of a much enhanced business budgeting system across the entire clients’ business as a whole, the company drives performance management by optimising internal processes and developing forecasts that enable managers to see trends, patterns, opportunities, and risks long before their competitors. In addition, InfoCat combines ‘top down’ and distributed ‘bottom up’ planning processes to increase accuracy, transparency, and access to information and deliver real-time calculation and consolidation. Besides, the London-based firm also supports complementary financial performance management tools including IBM Cognos Controller and Certent Disclosure Management (CDM) to boost ROI.

InfoCat relies on its full range of services from design through to development and training, an enviable reference list of long-standing blue chip clients, and a dedicated support desk to provide both standard software support and more sophisticated application support where required.

To understand how InfoCat brings a change in clients’ EPM, let us delve into a case study wherein the company collaborated with Miki Travel and helped them implement an advanced planning and forecasting solution. To help protect its margins, Miki Travel wanted to gain a more granular view of its overheads — but its manual, spreadsheet-based reporting processes were complex, time-consuming and prone to error. InfoCat incorporated Cognos Express TM1 from IBM and enabled Miki Travel to allocate costs quickly and accurately to each of its divisions. InfoCat even helped the client identify and drive new cost-efficiencies and allowed it to create accurate, highly detailed cost allocation.

Manned by fully trained consultants with real life Planning Analytics & TM1 project experience, InfoCat even offers dedicated support to its clients–often diagnosing and resolving issues on the spot. The company works round the clock to provide support for customers’ software and application, and technical support and advice through its helpdesk. With innovation at its core, it is no wonder that soon InfoCat will remodel the finance structure globally in the days to come.

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InfoCat

Company
InfoCat

Management
Stephen Waters, MD

Description
A Financial Performance Management consultancy, serving finance departments throughout the UK's private and public sectors, InfoCat focuses exclusively on the delivery of IBM performance management solutions, with deep expertise in IBM Cognos TM1/Planning Analytics. It essentially works with finance teams to implement applications for their financial reporting and consolidation, budgeting and forecasting, financial risk management, predictive analytics, and more. With specialists who were accountants themselves, the company has lived through the nightmare of trying to use spreadsheets to manage the financial performance of an enterprise and plan the future. This enables InfoCat to better understand the challenges in the accounting realm and deliver optimal IBM performance management solutions. Recognised as one of the most knowledgeable IBM Planning Analytics TMI team in Europe, InfoCat helps finance departments implement systems to plan, monitor, and model their organisation's performance

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InfoCat: Strengthening the Financial Backbone of Companies

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InfoCat relies on its full range of services from design through to development and training, an enviable reference list of long-standing blue chip clients, and a dedicated support desk to provide both standard software support and more sophisticated application support where required.

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