Case Study: Cogent Communications

The return on investment – in a few words

• Automated process: one single data entry point and multiple output possibilities
• Endless analysis capability: per point of view, per category, per dimension …
• Timely production of a set of various reports

The situation

Cogent Europe is part of a US group. They acquired Consolidation & Reporting a few years ago for the monthly consolidated reporting of the European subgroup. In a second phase, the headquarters in the United States was looking for a software to provide the relevant information and documentation to several stakeholders (management, analysts, tax authorities, auditors) and perform a monthly hard close.

The solution

The license for Consolidation & Reporting is now used across the group to provide a variety of reports in several currencies:

• Worldwide consolidated financials in USD
• Europe consolidated package in EUR
• American consolidation in USD, Canadian financials in CAD
• A regional consolidated view in USD
• A roll forward revenue (revenue by type of client, type of sale, type of product)
• A rolling budget
  

The local data is automatically imported into Consolidation & Reporting from different accounting systems and databases. It includes both financial data and non-financial data. The group also makes use of different possibilities of the software:

• Linked categories: they allow the creation of different environments that share the same input data. This functionality is very useful when it comes to create different consolidation scopes (i.e. sub-consolidations) or consolidations in different currencies. For instance: the Canadian flash revenue is produced in CAD, the European flash revenue is in EUR, while the consolidated flash revenue is in USD with only one import into Consolidation & Reporting.
• Points of view: they make it possible to have a segmented view of consolidated data in the group currency. In the case of Cogent, the segmentation is used for a regional consolidated view.
• Analytical dimensions: they are used for detailed activities reporting, revenue and customer analysis.

The result

By the use of the software and its functionalities, the group is able to:

• Create monthly closing and management reports (monthly hard close at D+15)
• Produce local and worldwide consolidation reports, from different consolidation scopes and in multiple currencies, based on one data entry point
• Generate a monthly “flash report” at D+11, consisting in a revenue analysis by product type and by entity
• Analyze the data according to endless possibilities: per point of view, category, analytical dimensions …