Case Studies

Five Star Senior Living

Five Star Senior Living knows how to run senior living communities superbly, to benefit the residents and their families, as well as the company's investors. But information technology upkeep for communities tasked with budgeting, planning and reporting activites is not its core expertise. So when Five Star decided it needed a comprehensive corporate performance managment (CPM) suite, it chose an off-premise, SaaS solution - Clarity OnDemand - knowing that Clarity Systems would take good care of Five Star's processing and database requirements in the same friendly and professional manner that Five Star staff takes care of its communities' residents.

BCS

British Computer Society (BCS) discovered in Clarity 6 a budgeting and planning solution that could automatically create a single spreadsheet, based on direct input from the BCS business units, while maintaining information accuracy and version control. As well as being deployed immediately, to complete the BCS budget cycle in four weeks, the company determined that Clarity 6 could also grow and expand with the firm in future.

British Airways

The Finance Group Reporting Team at British Airways found Clarity FSR to be the perfect control mechanism to provide the airline’s management, regulators and investors with accurate and timely financial information, which transparently reflected the state of its operations. Automatic validating and an audit trail of all departmental information made FSR an obvious choice.

LGC

Growing organically and through acquisitions, LGC and its score of legal entities were facing the classic external reporting problem: how to pull financial information – numbers and commentary – from hundreds of Excel spreadsheets and Word documents – to assemble and file an error-free financial report, on time. The firm found its answer with Clarity FSR; a comprehensive solution that automates external financial reporting. Besides reducing the risk of errors and late filing, LGC was pleased that its external reporting process using FSR shows the financial community that its numbers are solid and on track, which is a very valuable benefit in these recessionary times.

CN

Consistent with CN’s tradition of innovation in the pursuit of long-term growth, profitability and shareholder value creation, the Company’s Financial Reporting department is always looking for ways to improve the way it operates. This commitment was evidenced by the Company’s investigation in late 2007 into ways to improve what was already a highly-efficient process for creating and filing external reports with regulators in the United States (SEC) and in Canada.

F5 Networks

As classic Excel users, F5 needed a more efficient way to conduct their budgeting process. With approximately 50 linked spreadsheets and an average of 10 tabs in each, consolidating data was a manual and time consuming process. F5’s four international theatres found it unmanageable to email files back and forth and update actual financial results manually. Rapid success meant F5 needed a new solution immediately that could grow with the needs of the business. Clarity 6’s web-based solution gave F5 users around the world access to the latest financial information. In addition, the solution automatically incorporates data from their HR database, eliminating the need to reconcile non-financial data manually.

Ocean Nutrition

Ensuring accuracy and accountability were key factors leading Ocean Nutrition to seek out a CPM solution. Information was inputted by all users but it was up to the finance team to manually streamline and adjust the data. Reports were consolidated manually and distributed to management on a regular basis. Clarity 6 helped to consolidate and derive budgeted and forecasted financial data for quick and easy report generation. Now, Ocean Nutrition users around the world can access the budget over the web. In addition, it takes the finance team only seven days to create month end reports as opposed to over a month.

Ogletree Deakins

Ogletree Deakins relied on Excel spreadsheets to project marketing, supplies, payroll and other expenses. Consolidating all this information into one spreadsheet required long hours and proved to be an unproductive way to complete the budget. Clarity 6 Legal Edition provided a solution that reduced the time they allocated to their budget. Manual consolidation of spreadsheets and numerical errors were eliminated. The HR application in place allows for salary adjustments and variances to be calculated instantly so the firm takes 50% less time to complete the personnel side of budget using Clarity 6. This web based solution provided Ogletree Deakins with an easy transition to a new budgeting and reporting process.

Hodgson Russ

Manually loading information into Excel to produce the budget proved to be a daunting task for this legal firm. Receiving data on loose paper and spreadsheets of different formats and programs meant finalizing the budget would take months for Hodgson Russ’ finance department. Selecting Clarity 6 eliminated this cumbersome process allowing them to create more accurate and detailed financial statements. Connecting to their existing Elite Enterprise database, the web based Clarity 6 solution allows regional office managers at different locations to enter data into the budget without calling on the finance team. Users have easy access to standardized reports and variances which they can update and analyze.

Arcturus

Arcturus Realty prepared and tracked its annual budgets via Microsoft Excel spreadsheets which proved to be extremely complex due to both the volume and fragility of spreadsheets and the manual nature of the process. Clarity 6 was able to easily integrate with Arcturus’ ERP system and was able to leverage their existing SQL Server and Analysis Services database environment. Clarity 6 was implemented in less than one month and Arcturus users quickly transitioned to Clarity 6 as it provides a familiar Excel like interface delivered through a web browser.

Omron

Omron Corporation, a leading manufacturer of medical products, was experiencing performance issues with their financial system. After a slew of independent consultants, Omron called on the Clarity Systems consulting team to optimize the performance of the existing system. After a successful year with the Clarity consulting team, Omron implemented Clarity 6 which moved Omron to an even higher level of performance.

AIMCO

As a property management company with over 1200 properties, AIMCO found that using Excel for their budgeting process was cumbersome and time consuming. AIMCO now relies on Clarity 6 to accurately measure their performance. The solution allows them to quickly roll-up spreadsheets, conduct insightful rolling forecasts and correctly consolidate information.

Brock White

Before adopting Clarity 6 software, Brock White relied entirely on spreadsheets for their planning. This became a constant struggle for the finance department to build and maintain accurate analytical models that ultimately distracted finance staff from higher value analytical activities. With Clarity 6, they now have the ability to rapidly publish data to more people than just finance and senior management. They perform meaningful analysis down to the sales rep and customer level that was never possible in the past. This has allowed Brock White to make more informed business decisions.

Port Coquitlam

When it came time to create the City of Port Coquitlam’s budget, Budgeting Officer Jason Rude and his team were faced with large amounts of manual data entries. Errors in numbers made it difficult to analyze how to spend money effectively. With Clarity 6, they had the opportunity to analyze data and determine how to spend their budget more efficiently while keeping the city’s tax rate low.

Grand & Toy

Before Grand & Toy launched the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) Reporting application, their latest Clarity 6 implementation, it was difficult to present the overall company performance metrics in a consistent and intuitive format. Grand & Toy was looking for a solution that could report its performance in a way that was clearly understood by different departments and levels of management while allowing comparison of various metrics across different time periods.

HOLT CAT

Rapid growth and an increase in reporting requirements made executing and completing the budgeting process at HOLT CAT very time consuming and unpredictable. Clarity 6 was a natural choice for HOLT CAT. Because the product is web based and has an Excel look and feel, Clarity 6 facilitates a more efficient process and produces data HOLT CAT can depend on.

Colonial Pipeline

Colonial Pipeline Co. is an interstate carrier of petroleum products. Each day, it delivers an average of 96 million gallons of gasoline, kerosene, home heating oils, diesel fuels and national defense fuels to shipper terminals in 12 states and the District of Columbia. As the world's largest refined petroleum products pipeline system by volume, Colonial’s finance department is presented with the demanding task of budgeting and planning for such a large and complex organization.

White Lodging

Since its formation in 1985, White Lodging Services Corp. has had a history of sustainable, profitable expansion. Now, it is a mid-size, private hotel management company with 87 locations employing 5,000 people. As the company was growing, they were also outgrowing their budgeting process which involved e-mailing Excel worksheets back and forth. White Lodging wanted a solution that met three criteria: it had to be easy to use, low-cost and flexible.

Beam Global Spirits and Wine

Beam Global Spirits and Wine is a leading producer and distributor of distilled spirits, producing the number-one bourbon in the world. It is a subsidiary of Fortune Brands, whose holdings include home products company Moen, office products company ACCO World, and golf equipment brands Titleist and Cobra in addition to a number of other producers and distributors of distilled spirits.

Safeco Insurance

Safeco's mission is to make the consumer's experience of buying, selling, and owning insurance easier than with anyone else. Safeco's success with this approach has propelled it up into the Fortune 500 rank of top companies. In order to tightly monitor Safeco's operations, its Finance and IT departments jointly manage the process by bundling their budgeting, forecasting, consolidations, reporting and analysis into one, enterprise-wide Corporate Performance Management solution that benefits not just the company but also Safeco's agent/advisors and their clients.

Grand and Toy

Today, with more than 2,700 employees working in over 90 locations across Canada, Grand & Toy continues to be a market leader in the office products industry. That’s why it’s committed to creating an innovative Customer Relationship Management (CRM) program. And the launch of its newest CRM reporting tool – Defector Detector – proves the point.

Election Systems & Software

Beginning with Clarity 6’s leveraging of MS Excel – important because the end-user community is made of mostly business users familiar with Excel – many features and benefits played a role in ES&S choosing Clarity. Clarity also demonstrated a comprehensive knowledge of budgeting