Alcyon
“This ABC approach and the setting up of MyABCM fits very well also to medium organizations, we are the proof!”
Ronan Salaün
Administrative and financial director
France
COMPANY
Alcyon is a French leader in the distribution of medicines for animals, food and equipment. A company created by and for veterinarians, Alcyon brings the best solutions in the market with presence all over France, Belgium and Italy.
By developing the prescription dispensing activity of veterinarians in these countries, Alcyon is helping to strengthen the role of veterinarians in Europe.
CHALLENGE
In order to survive and keep growing in such a competitive market the company faced important businesses challenges, such as:
SOLUTION
MyABCM was the solution chosen to bring more transparency, agility and competitiveness to Alcyon. According to Hervé Championnet, Administrative and Financial Manager, “It’s the choice of simplicity, responsiveness and lightness that led us to choose MyABCM”.
RESULTS
With MyABCM Alcyon is an even more serious player in its market and knows which products to sell to which customers and at what price – all with mapped processes and controls and permanently adjusted.
Cadbury – Grupo Peñafiel
“These days leading companies need tools that will provide them with greater control and financial transparency, which will give them an idea of the real profitability of their brands allowing them to identify where they should invest, always focusing on formulating winning strategies that will support the growth of a healthy, profitable business. ABC costing has become Grupo Peñafiel’s main tool for informing its decision making.”
Nestor Castro
Financial Planning Manager
Grupo Peñafiel, Mexico
COMPANY
Grupo Peñafiel is one of the largest beverage companies in Mexico. They have been in business for more than 60 years, and they offer a wide variety of carbonated and non-carbonated drinks. With more than 50 leading brands, such as Peñafiel, Clamato, Squirt, Aguafiel, Crush, Dr. Pepper, Snapple, Canada Dry, and Schweppes, among others, they have more than 300,000 points of sale. Their business model integrates every step of the supply chain, from manufacturing the product to distributing it to its consumers.
CHALLENGE
Grupo Peñafiel’s greatest difficulty was getting appropriate information for its performance indicators in enough detail to make decisions, because the group’s previous system was obsolete.
SOLUTION
MyABCM is a very attractive tool because it offers several benefits at the same time: processes that can be automated using the interface, quick calculation times, the importing of tables, the exporting of cubes, technical support, and the flexibility to adjust with internal changes without needing to hire a consulting firm, among others.
RESULTS
The process currently takes 2 days as compared to the 15 days it took in the past before the implementation of MyABCM. Thanks to the sophisticated and detailed information provided by this tool for profitability as well as other forms of analysis, the company today has better control of the cost and profitability of its routes, markets, brands, channels, and clients.
Corporación Aceros Arequipa
“I’d like to acknowledge all the support and attention we’ve received from the MyABCM team during the post-sales process.”
Gustavo Parodi
ABC Costing Project Supervisor
Corporación Aceros Arequipa, Peru
COMPANY
A company founded in 1964 in the city of Arequipa, Peru, it began its operations producing and supplying steel bars for the machine and construction industries. Known for the high quality of its products, it soon became this segment’s main supplier. It’s the current leader in the steel industry and a key corporation for the Peruvian government, producing more than a million tons of steel annually.
CHALLENGE
They needed an ABC costing system distinct from that used by accounting which would make it possible to obtain detailed information quickly. They wanted the ABC methodology and thus they needed a system that would administrate this type of cost model.
SOLUTION
MyABCM was selected due to its flexibility, the clarity with which its resource and activity structures, its ability to analyze information, its cost tracing, the integrated OLAP tool and its graphics.
RESULTS
The ABC costing software is helping to obtain costing information and compare it with the costs assigned from other departments, as well as identifying cost reduction opportunities. Monthly deviations from budgeted costs are also analyzed per cost center.
Pantera Alimentos
“The tool enabled a view of the costs in the company, enriching and modernizing the way we do management. It allows for predictive analysis and scenario simulation, in addition to better data management, replacing, for example, spreadsheets in the task of controlling information. The implementation process was quick, assertive and with a lean and efficient team.”
Vinicius Esperança
Controller, CFO
Pantera Alimentos, Brazil
COMPANY
Pantera Alimentos is a company in the food sector focused on the processing and packaging of beans, rice and cassava flour. The company was founded in 1975 and its current headquarters is located in Itu, in the state of São Paulo.
The great mission of Pantera Alimentos is to provide to Brazilian families Premium products with excellence in quality, flavor, high nutritional value and incomparable visual aspect. In addition, they aim to meet the needs of nourishment, enjoyment and notoriety to customers.
CHALLENGE
Like other companies in the food sector, Pantera Alimentos had the challenge of determining its costs and profitability, after all, nowadays, it is essential to understand exactly what the costs are and what the result is throughout various dimensions of analysis, especially when dealing with high indirect costs.
SOLUTION
The MyABCM solution was chosen with the purpose of helping this need of determining the costs of the company.
“A 100% remote deployment with a team of great expertise, which made it easier for us to set up the system that will be perfect to assist in decision-making and cost analysis. We are totally satisfied with the project and the tool”, said Anderson Diggroc, Head of T.I.
RESULTS
After the conclusion of the project, Pantera Alimentos was able to obtain a more detailed analysis of its results by channel, product family, type of operation, product category, product, economic group, customer and order, as well as to automate various management reports that were carried out manually, thus resulting in more time available for analysis of the information generated by MyABCM.
Qualtia Alimentos
“Thanks to the excellent team effort, all of the challenges were overcome successfully. The project included the integration of the MyABCM software with the already existing integrated corporate systems. The Qualtia Operations Committee approved the model and demonstrated enormous satisfaction with the results achieved with this tool, using the MyABCM tool as its main pillar for making company decisions. Currently the profitability model is the most important tool for making informed reliable decisions, and is fundamental to most of the company’s projects.”
Victor Hugo Rodriguez Morgado
Strategic Planning and Financial Management
Qualtia Alimentos, Mexico
COMPANY
Qualtia Alimentos was founded in 1972 and acquired by the Xignux group in 1976. It’s a company dedicated to the making and commercialization of meat and cheese related products. The Mexican group Xignux has more than 30 thousand employees and is a leader due to its great growth in international markets; its products are present in over 40 countries and the company has a broad participation in the market divided among the electric, automotive and food sectors.
CHALLENGE
Qualtia used a profitability system that had been implemented five years before. Besides not being an ABC costing model, it had lost precision and accuracy during this period because it had not been maintained. The previous ABC software supplier hadn’t been able to provide the level of service that Qualtia needed to restructure its profitability model and adapt it to existing information as well as reduce the previous system’s processing time.
The profitability figures were calculated using a standard process. However, the confidence in the resulting information was very low. The company chose to find a software supplier that could provide support for the calculation of profitability and that had a deep understanding of Qualtia’s model.
The supplier of the previous software didn’t have a good enough knowledge of Qualtia’s model and needed to send a team of foreign consultants to map the model. The confidence in the information generated became lower and lower and analyses were performed ignoring input from the profitability model using global allocations instead. The company was losing money and didn’t have enough relevant information about which segments were most being affected.
SOLUTION
The MyABCM team was chosen to redesign the costing and profitability model together with installing the MyABCM software, which was much more user-friendly than the previous production control system used by Qualtia. The MyABCM team was completely involved throughout the entire implementation.
In MyABCM, Qualtia found the solution to its 2 main problems: the need to find a team capable of redesigning its costing model to analyze different dimensions (clients, products, channels and zones) and the need for user-friendly software that could improve the processing time for the generation of the necessary information.
RESULTS
The original goal of new costing model design was to update the costing drivers and to implement a new software that would be capable of calculating the company’s profitability much faster than the previous system had done. These goals were achieved successfully and the Qualtia costing model went from a simple model that assigned costs to cost objects to becoming a powerful ABC model.
The entire consulting project and the implementation of the profitability model by MyABCM was performed during the period stipulated by Qualtia and substantially reduced the time spent on calculating profitability from the 12 to 18 hours of the previous system to 6 hours for the new system. With the new design of the costing/profitability model, the company regained confidence in its information, enabling it to make relevant decisions to resolve problems that it hadn’t known how to tackle before. Currently most of the organization’s projects revolve around information generated by MyABCM’s production control program.
Martins
“The ABC Costing solution presented by MyABCM stands out in terms of Cost/Benefit and the availability of its team during the implementation process, an item of fundamental importance to the success of a project. One aspect of great importance is its ease of use. A revealing statistic is how few times we needed to consult MyABCM’s technical support. When we did consult them, they were always available and efficient, guaranteeing continuity in the use of this tool, given that the company’s monthly closing process is critical and there’s little time to run it. Thus MyABCM’s Costing software has fully met our technical needs.”
Roberto Rosa Santana
Systems Department
Grupo Martins, Brazil
COMPANY
Martins Comércio e Serviços de Distribuição S/A is today the largest and best wholesale distributor in Latin America and is the main component of Grupo Martins. It distributes merchandise to 100% of Brazilian municipalities, playing a unique role in the national supply chain. It has more than 300,000 active clients.
CHALLENGE
Update the Costing system to reflect changes in management and evaluate the profitability of the different business areas.
Assign costs from the business support areas using less subjective criteria and be able to trace costs afterward to understand the assignments made.
Consolidate the calculations of revenues and direct and indirect costs and extract a combinational view of the profitability of the main business areas of the firm (Clients, Product Categories, Sales Channels, Product/Service Type and Geographic Region).
The size of the model is daunting due to the large number of dimensions involved (clients, region, product classification, etc) and the size of each of these dimensions (mainly clients and products).
SOLUTION
The MyABCM solution was selected for the Costing of indirect costs and activities as well as direct costs for the business areas. This solution met our needs well in terms of determining costs and processing our defined model. After performing our Costing using the Model, we’re using our information portal in DW/BI to publish the results.
It’s an open system with an easy to use interface. The project’s first step was to model the process developed by Martins and Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, in conjunction with MyABCM, mapping out the costs, activities and cost assignment drivers.
The implementation of the MyABCM solution took 3 months. Later we implemented the more complex step of extracting data from the transaction systems for the Martins DW, which was loaded into the MyABCM Cost Calculation process and then returned to the Martins DW/BI where we published different views of costs and profitability.
RESULTS
Now we’re able to align our businesses with the company’s Strategic Planning, deploying the results in the business areas and now managers are responsible for their specific areas. Costs assignments can be traced back to their origins giving the process transparency and providing understanding of the costs involved in each business area. The MyABCM methodology for controlling costs and production has made it possible to make forecasts for the company’s main businesses, making it possible for the manager to correct occasional deviations with greater agility.
Stime
“MyABCM helps STIME having an integrated solution for services catalog invoicing. That’s a scalable solution which enables changes of rules and data management directly by CFOs. We have no doubt on functional coverage of MyABCM and there is no limit about the solution.”
Xavier Trébouta
Finance and Management Control Director
STIME – France
COMPANY
STIME is a subsidiary of the Intermarché group which is dedicated to the delivery of IT services. It has its own employees, revenue of 200 million euros and serves the group’s warehouses, offices and affiliates as well as its points of sale.
CHALLENGE
In 2005, the IT Systems and Governance Department defined a model for the comparative evaluation of IT costs based on the Activity-Based Costing (ABC) methodology to deal with the organization’s concerns in terms of performance, profitability and process control.
For STIME, there were many objectives for this change ranging from improving its relationship with its clients to improving internal performance and efficiency.
SOLUTION
In a meeting with the team from MyABCM France at the beginning of 2013, STIME discovered that the MyABCM solution would be a more efficient and more reliable option to simplify the annual budgeting process (June through September) and decided to substitute its current system by the MyABCM solution. The system’s implementation took just 3 months, and the MyABCM solution gave STIME additional high value-added resources, such as:
RESULTS
Today STIME has no doubts about the extent and coverage of its MyABCM solution which provides it with true strategic cost management, and the firm has yet to discover any limits to this solution.
Latvenergo
“Precise financial information is a fundamental requirement for making a correct, informed decision. Undeniably, MyABCM is a tool that offers us great support.”
Guntars Balcuns
Director of Planning and Control
Latvenergo, Latvia
COMPANY
Latvenergo is a public company based in Riga, Latvia, which plays a key role in the economic scenario of this country. It’s focus is on the generation and sale of electric and thermal energy. The company had an ABC costing model using Excel spreadsheets that was basically used to assign the company’s support costs to its subsidiaries as well as separating the costs of generating energy (thermal and hydroelectric stations) and selling energy. Thus, it was possible to obtain an individual analysis of these units.
CHALLENGE
The main problems with the previous system was the model’s transparency, its lack of flexibility in relation to recurring structural changes, and the absence of any functionality to deal with reciprocal cost assignments. Given this, in 2008 Latvenergo opted to acquire a professional costing tool that would support activity based costing.
SOLUTION
The MyABCM costing software was selected as the best alternative available in the market for calculating and analyzing real costs from a cost/quality standpoint.
One of the objectives for this migration was to improve the quality of the model and to also implement the improvements recommended by the consultants responsible for the software’s installation. All of the data was transferred to MyABCM in less than a month with help from the consulting firm’s specialized professionals.
The initial structure and assignment logic were maintained even after the migration of the model to MyABCM, even though recommendations to improve it were suggested during the process, and a few of them related to the model’s transparency were implemented during the migration itself.
RESULTS
ABC Costing is a methodology of assigning indirect costs with the goal of analyzing the real cost of services offered. This methodology has been used mainly by companies in various sectors (industry, services, the government), and all over the world to support strategic decisions in terms of pricing, outsourcing and process improvements.
Transferring the original model to a professional system for calculating and analyzing costs is the first step to implementing the ABC Costing methodology and benefitting from its greater control and reduction of costs. Some of the benefits that MyABCM has given us are an easy to use, user-friendly tool, much greater model transparency, countless possible analyses, simple updates and the ability for many users to access the model at the same time.
UTE
“All areas of the company obtained the necessary information for decision making, emphasizing traceability from the beginning to the end of the entire process.”
Alicia Balaguer
Assistant Manager of Financial Studies and Costs
Montevideo, Uruguay
COMPANY
With a high degree of complexity in its operations, UTE is a company of the Uruguayan Government, whose action includes the whole electric power supply chain for the country. Thus, UTE performs from generation to transmission and distribution, as well as the commercialization of energy in Uruguay, as well as other peripheral services and consultancy services in the sector. With its wind, hydroelectric and thermoelectric power generation plants, the company serves more than 1.2 million customers located throughout the Uruguayan territory.
CHALLENGE
UTE has since 1998 a costing system based on activities, which allowed it to determine the cost of its Business Units and other objects of cost, as well as its main activities. However, this information wasn’t incorporated into the decision-making process of the organization but was used primarily to comply with the requirements of regulatory bodies, so a process was designed with a management perspective, to obtain the information required in time and form for decision making.
This challenge consisted in the definition of a new process that included a new dictionary of activities, plotters, and cost objects, so that all areas of the company obtained the necessary information for decision-making, emphasizing the traceability from the beginning to the end of the whole process.
SOLUTION
We are very satisfied with the MyABCM tool, and we have the following comments:
RESULTS
Cost models designed at the corporate level, for each business unit and the specific model required by the regulator, met the project’s initial objectives and expectations.
Imprensa Oficial do Estado de SP
“The MyABCM software is surprising because it combines ease of use with versatility and flexibility. The limits are virtually in the design of the model rather than the tool. MyABCM presented a high standard of quality in its tech support services, its technical consulting and its training, exceeding all expectations. In addition, its great experience with ABC costing models provided significant help in the structuring of our costing model as well as the system’s rapid implementation and delivering the project on time. From the first meeting, MyABCM’s posture has been that of a true partner, making it very clear that the success of the implementation was as important to them as it was to us.”
Adilson Rocha
Financial Manager
Imprensa Oficial do Estado de São Paulo, Brazil
COMPANY
It was created in 1891 with the mission of providing transparency to the acts of the Government of São Paulo through the newspaper Diário Oficial do Estado, which today has more than a thousand employees. It has gone through many transformations during its history, starting as a purely graphic representation, then becoming a written newspaper, gaining autonomy to become a news agency distributing information about the State to other newspapers and magazines, and finally assuming the responsibility of being the State’s Digital Certification Authority.
CHALLENGE
The growth of the company and the increasing complexity of its processes created a challenge to improve the management of its costs, expenses and results, requiring a solution that would complement the Accounting Department.
SOLUTION
The company decided to develop a hybrid model of costing software, combining an ABC (Activity Based Costing) model with a fixed and variable cost model. This model offers management views in various dimensions with all the detail necessary to make informed decisions.
RESULTS
The first version of the system has already been tested and a second version is rapidly being developed based on user feedback. The managerial reports are produced more often and with a single source of information guaranteeing more accuracy and agility. The software also enables the user to make analyses that use scenarios and simulations, adding greater richness to the company’s strategic discussions.
Bardahl
“The MyABCM team’s unconditional support helped facilitate the implementation of the costing model enormously. Even after this stage, we had access to the support of these professionals in extracting the information necessary to generate reports.”
Eduardo Gonzalez Plasencia
Cost Manager
Bardahl, Mexico
COMPANY
Bardahl, a company founded in the United States in 1939, is a leader in the automotive fluid, additive and lubricant market. It opened its first office in Mexico in 1951 and has been the market leader ever since.
CHALLENGE
Bardahl Mexico needed tools to make strategic decisions. With its business divided into several distribution channels, it was difficult to determine the precise profitability of its cost objects. Even when they suspected that one of the products wasn’t profitable, they had no tool to confirm this with confidence.
SOLUTION
The ABC costing model, supported by MyABCM, allowed them to perform detailed analyses of the most varied cost objects to make strategic decisions, not just related to Distribution Channels, but also to products, business units and even personnel information. It was also important in establishing standards across the business units and sales departments, where the implemented model helps even in calculating bonuses.
RESULTS
As with every cost analysis and modeling methodology, implementing the ABC system required commitment and sacrifice from the entire organization. The benefits, however, have been innumerable, and they have led to great changes, improving the company’s profitability.
Corporación Maresa
“MyABCM allows you to view the costing model in a graphic manner, which facilitated its validation as the project evolved. The support we received in terms of optimizing the conceptual model’s structure, integrating company information with the profitability dimensions, and the generating of reports, was very agile. We received enough training so that we could progress on our own, knowing that at any moment we could count on support from the MyABCM team.”
Juan Carlos Arellano
CFO, Executive Vice President
Corporación Maresa, Ecuador
COMPANY
The Corporación Maresa was created in 1997 in Quito, Ecuador, with the objective of forming a conglomerate of auto dealers and automakers. The companies that comprise this holding company are Maresa Ensambladora, Mazda, Ford, Avis, Kawasaki and Maresa Colombia. Corporación Maresa Holding supervises the operations of its component companies developing business strategies and providing support to various areas.
CHALLENGE
The challenge for Corporación Maresa was to inculcate a culture of strategic cost management, going from the assignment of corporate costs to various business units to profitability per product, client and channel. The organization already had accounting information per cost center and standard costs at one of its manufacturing units. However, it couldn’t tell clearly the effort that the support areas provided the rest of the company. They also didn’t have profitability information per client and channel, especially in the commercial and service units.
SOLUTION
The MyABCM software chosen is very light and easy to use for profitability analysis, it can simulate storage for various periods, it’s easy to use in the local language (Spanish), and it produces reports, performs graphic analyses and also measures costs based on the company’s activities. The costing models constructed for the corporate level as well as the business unit level fully met all our initial goals and expectations. Different levels of detail for costing and profitability information, as well as costing assignments, enable us to broaden the analyses which inform our decisions related to planning and scenario simulations.
RESULTS
The information we’ve obtained ever since the first few reporting periods have been of great value, because they’ve enabled us to see how our costs behave as well as their origins and impacts on business profitability, and this has now made it possible to manage our business targets much better. This tool also offers support for corporate budgeting, scenario simulations for various business units, and an appropriate treatment of capacity.
University of Buenos Aires
Website: www.uba.ar
Industry: Higher education / Educational institution
Founded in: 1821
COMPANY
The University of Buenos Aires is the largest University in Argentina and the second largest University in enrollment in Latin America. Established in 1821 in Buenos Aires, Argentina is constituted by 13 departments, 6 hospitals, 10 museums and is linked to 4 secondary education schools: Colégio Nacional de Buenos Aires, Escola Superior de Comércio Carlos Pellegrini, Instituto Libre de Segunda Enseñanza e Escola de Educação Profissional Técnica em Agricultura e Produção de Alimentos.
A retail oriented firm with diversified products and services including its virtual store and fidelity program, Ipiranga gas stations offer fuel and lubricants as well as convenience store products.
Why did you choose MyABCM solutions for the classes?
Because it fits in perfectly as a real-life experience beyond theory. MyABCM tool shows how ABC costs are managed with all functionalities and benefits in all sectors of the economy.
How did MyABCM improve the classes?
ABC is still feared as extremely hard and difficult to implement. Opinion defended by some professors, scholars, and authors. My intention by using MyABCM tool is to demystify this perception.
How does MyABCM support the teaching and learning process?
MyABCM contributes to facilitate the understanding of strategic cost management making the classes more dynamic and goal oriented. The aim is to use MyABCM in a case study for a week to develop several scenarios. It is a better way of presenting realia than the classic presentation (slides).
Carrefour Soluções Financeiras
“I would like to acknowledge the excellence of their support team during the tool’s implementation and the beginning of its operation in terms of the training they provided about the software’s functionality which enabled us quickly absorb this new knowledge. We are very satisfied with this partnership.”
Lívia Pereira Bastos
Control and Management
Carrefour Soluções Financeiras, Brazil
COMPANY
With 32 years of experience in Brazil, Grupo Carrefour has been a pioneer in this country’s retail market with its hypermarkets. Today its network consists of 190 units located in 14 different states. Operating under the brands Carrefour, Carrefour Bairro and Atacadão, this group is the market leader in the supermarket sector with 55 thousand employees, and is thus one of the largest employers in the country. This Group is the second largest retailer in the world, operating in 29 countries.
In terms of services, the Group includes Pharmacies, Fuel Stations, and Travel Agencies, reflecting the brand strategy of Carrefour in Brazil. The Carrefour Card was launched almost 20 years ago and began as a way to offer clients credit and financing options for their daily purchases. In May 2007, Grupo Carrefour consolidated its financial institution and began to offer new products and services to the company’s more than 7 million customers under the brand Carrefour Soluções Financeiras. Present throughout Brazil, Carrefour Soluções Financeiras was created with the goal of being the best option in terms of offering and distributing financial products and services to Grupo Carrefour’s target market.
CHALLENGE
The project emerged from the need of upper management to find a new way of analyzing and monitoring bank costs, adopting in principle a methodology different from the classic registering of costs per account and cost center.
In addition, there was a need to integrate and disseminate knowledge of the bank’s processes as a whole rather than within the narrow responsibility of each cost center.
SOLUTION
In the middle of 2008, the MyABCM tool was selected as part of the solution developed to support cost management for Carrefour Soluções Financeiras – CSF by Processes. After conducting an evaluation of software available in the market, MyABCM was chosen because it met the company’s technical and financial expectations. The software was implemented through a partnership with the consulting firm Ankyla Serviços de Consultoria, and quality support helped ensure that everything ran smoothly within the expected timeframe.
A consulting firm was hired to develop the system’s modeling and they opted for the ABC costing methodology and the purchase of a tool, given that their ERP didn’t have this functionality. The beginning of this implementation led to two pilot projects for the two main processes at Carrefour.
RESULTS
Currently the two macro-processes have been completely mapped (Maintaining Clients and Acquiring Clients) and they’re being monitored as a form of internally disseminating knowledge about this new form of analyzing results and making decisions. In addition to the intangible gains that have already been achieved, such as having a vision of the processes as a whole and not just separate “fiefdoms,” relevant accounting adjustments have already been identified which have led to a parallel project to review processes in the financial and accounting management areas.
There were many gains in the first year from mapping and detailing the costs involved in the main processes, and they came mainly in the form of more informed decision-making and a change in culture in which each area has become responsible for its part of the process.
Coopmil
“The MyABCM technological solution really has many of the qualities that are usually only promised in other tools. The software is very stable, intuitive, and simple to operate; interactions with the support team happen because of evolutions in the cost model, not because of problems with the solution. The tool creates a virtuous circle, as usually the necessary improvements are for our processes and controls, and this was evidenced by one of the functionalities that we intend to implement. As for the company MyABCM, we saw that the same care taken in the relationship during the contracting phase remains in our partnership.”
André Ribeiro Baião
Accountant
São Paulo, Brazil
COMPANY
Coopmil is a non-profit financial cooperative aimed at promoting the well-being of cooperative families by providing the best cost-benefit in financial and social products. Founded in 1989, Coopmil serves more than 46,000 cooperative members (military and civilian police, civil servants of the Department of Public Safety, pensioners, employees of Cruz Azul and Municipal Civil Guard). Its strategic mission and vision are to promote credit union in a sustainable way and be a reference in the system.
CHALLENGE
In recent years, credit unions have faced great challenges posed by the Brazilian credit market. There are many variables that influence the industry: the significant increase of players acting as financial agents in several platforms and different business models; the new strategies performed by the main market stakeholders in response to increased competitiveness; the need to diversify the portfolio of products and services, which considerably increases operating costs; the worsening economic crisis and the consequent default increase; and especially the policy of reducing interest rates practiced by the Central Bank of Brazil, which made credit unions significantly reduce revenues from financial intermediation, its main source of income.
SOLUTION
In recent years, credit unions have faced great challenges posed by the Brazilian credit market. There are many variables that influence the industry: the significant increase of players acting as financial agents in several platforms and different business models; the new strategies performed by the main market stakeholders in response to increased competitiveness; the need to diversify the portfolio of products and services, which considerably increases operating costs; the worsening economic crisis and the consequent default increase; and especially the policy of reducing interest rates practiced by the Central Bank of Brazil, which made credit unions significantly reduce revenues from financial intermediation, its main source of income.
RESULTS
The Project for the implementation of a cost management model using the ABC (Activity-Based Costing) methodology was already very successful in its initial phase at Coopmil, as it has contributed in a relevant way to reaching the strategic objectives of optimizing the cost structure and offering products and services with a better cost-benefit ratio.
Servipag
“Given the complexity of the services that our company offers, counting on MyABCM has enabled us to manage costs in a dynamic fashion, making it an important piece in our growth, enabling us to analyze costs per transaction for every process and calculating our profitability per product, channel and client.”
Oscar Alvarez
General Manager
Servipag, Chile
COMPANY
Servipag is a leading company in the billing and payment transaction market, and it was founded in 1990 by two of the country’s main financial institutions: Banco BCI and Banco do Chile. The company aims to support Chilean banking operations and seeks to broaden the services of these institutions as well as execute billing and payment transactions between national level companies (ranging from telecommunications, gas, and tolls to pensions and other forms of payment) and the consumers of their services.
Servipag offers multi-channel services to its clients that wish to effect billing and payment transactions through a network with 361 offices distributed throughout Chile and 1,400 Servipag Express agencies, as well as Servipag.com, which is considered the best billing portal in Chile.
Currently it meets the needs of an average of 3.5 million users who make payments or bill the services of roughly 1,300 companies, with an average of 9 million transactions per month.
Our commitment is to provide the greatest satisfaction to all our clients, by always seeking to meet their expectations, offering quality services that are also simple, agile and secure.
CHALLENGE
This project arose out of the need to have monthly cost information. The previous model used Excel and was not run on a monthly basis. It didn’t meet Servipag’s need to manage its costs with a view of its clients and products as well as measures of its performance in its various channels. All of this also had to be detailed enough so that decisions could be taken based on this information.
The second challenge was to align the strategies of different businesses and channels by being able to simulate various scenarios. It’s essential in managing the charge for each client to analyze the performance of the client to whom we offer our billing and payment services. We also need to analyze the impact of new projects, analyze transaction cost increases and decreases, and use the best costing practices.
We had to make sure channel and support area managers would be able to manage their costs with a high degree of accuracy. In this way, tracing costs and distinguishing between an object’s costs and received costs were also necessities that our project had to provide.
SOLUTION
MyABCM’s planning and cost and profit analysis system was chosen as one of the company’s strategic pillars for managing costs. First, the costing model was migrated from the Excel spreadsheets to gain some immediate advantages, which led to the generation of automatic monthly results without errors due to manual calculations.
The next step was to redo the modeling in MyABCM in order to incorporate relevant modifications that would meet the project’s needs like revising and updating our activities and processes, redefining drivers and including new services, as well as calculating costs per client.
RESULTS
Currently the costing model is run monthly with the complete process, including the loading of the data, taking 1 day and the model’s calculation taking just 5 minutes.
Among the main benefits that have been obtained are the efficient cost tracing of the main expenses with detail per channel, and the monthly contributions of the different clients that use our various billing and payment services by product and by channel.
It allows us to transfer the service costs between the participating areas of the main processes in a transparent manner, such as assigning the support area costs to the various lines of business.
Hospital Metropolitano de Urgência e Emergência
“Now with this new tool we’re going to gain flexibility in the elaboration of our Cost Management, because this is fast easy to use software that offers greater analysis with financial-economic indicators and even simulations of future scenarios.”
Celso Oliveira
Planning
Hospital Metropolitano de Urgência e Emergência, Brazil
COMPANY
The Hospital Metropolitano de Urgência e Emergência was inaugurated in 2006 in the municipality of Ananindeua, in the metropolitan region of Belém do Pará, in northeastern Brazil. The hospital meets the needs of people living in the Metropolitan Region as well as many other municipalities. The hospital is 190 thousand square feet in area and stands out because of its grandiose architecture.
It’s a reference for the treatment of trauma and burns of medium and high complexity and has a sophisticated Center of Image Diagnostics with the latest equipment available. It’s a public hospital that makes a priority of offering quality treatment for SUS (Unified Health System) patients, seeking excellence in the services it offers the population.
Its Mission is to attain excellence in urgent and emergency care and the management, with certification of a Teaching Hospital, of training for Human Resources in the Health Area.
CHALLENGE
To improve the institution’s Cost Management and to also get a better idea of the real cost of the services that the hospital offers. In February 2007, Hospital Metropolitano began the Cost Management project, and the first reports were emitted in April. As time went on and the database grew, spreadsheets could no longer be used for this costing process.
The MyABCM software acquired is totally scalable which makes it possible to better determine the hospital’s costs.
SOLUTION
MyABCM was selected as the best option available on the market and it also offered an exclusive team with knowledge acquired from implementing more than 500 projects. Using MyABCM, Hospital Metropolitano has obtained detailed costing information for the Departments and Hospital Services available to patients, analyzing with precision the composition of the costs related to each of the model’s dimensions.
In addition, we analyze the contribution of Resources to the departments and services offered by the hospital, down to the unitary level. The import of MyABCM data is completely integrated with the hospital’s ERP system.
RESULTS
Using MyABCM’s technology for optimizing costs, the hospital’s technicians can quickly and easily visualize a map of the company’s costs. Now it’s easier to identify costs per patient and conduct studies of cost reductions and costs per sector, or use performance indicators and scenario simulations. The software also analyzes costs in a quicker, easier and more practical manner.
Equivida
“By institutionalizing and implementing the management and results of the ABC methodology in the organization in mid-2018, we found answers to the question “How much does it cost?”. The top management committee has established plans and strategies to move forward to the ABM methodology with answers to the next question: Why does it cost …?”
Carlos Chiluisa
Director of Financial Planning and Costs
Quito, Ecuador
COMPANY
Equivida is a leader in the insurance market in Ecuador, operating in the segment since 1995. Supported by the most experienced professionals in the global market, such as Swiss Re and Hannover Live Re, Equivida is dedicated to offering solid and reliable services to its customers, by means of a rigorous adaptation to the laws and regulations of the sector in the country, and by seeking to meet the needs and plans of their consumers.
CHALLENGE
In 2017, following a strategic decision, two ABC cost models were designed, the first oriented to administrative and support costs, and the second oriented to business costs (Commercial, Operational and Technical). The models were structured within the MyABCM system and using their functionalities were integrated with each other, meaning that the costs of the first model (administrative and support) are assigned to the second (business) model to obtain consolidated results, totally absorbed, and with total traceability.
In the year 2018 in the area of Finance, these two models continued to be managed and fed with accounting, operational and commercial information in a centralized manner to analyze the results of total and unit costs at the line of business, branch and product level. MyABCM contributed significantly in this second year through its OLAP reports, allowing the interactive visualization of both Costs results at a Strategic level (e.g., Profitability and Cost to Serv), Operative (Unit Cost), and Administrative (Charge Back Cost), as Cost Indicators to be monitored in each area.
RESULTS
By institutionalizing and implementing the management and results of the ABC methodology in the organization in mid-2018, we found answers to the question “How much does it cost?”. The top management committee has established plans and strategies to move forward to the ABM methodology with answers to the next question: Why does it cost …?, Where MyABCM played an important role by allowing the decentralization of the two initial models in 5 support models (FIN, IT, TH, CON, EST) and 3 business models (MKT, COM, OPE) and by analyzing the efficiency, productivity and unused installed capacity in each area through calculated routers.
The next challenges for the ABC/M project are related to the review of the results of 2018 by area and in a consolidated manner, the comparison between the real cost and the budget during 2019, the simulation and projection of business scenarios to medium and long term in 2023, as well as the initiation of actions that allow the reduction of costs or complexity of activities, the monitoring of efficiency and productivity, and/or the decision-making related to doing vs. buying. We will continue using the MyABCM system functionalities for the automatic creation of scenarios, import and export of information (expenses, standard times, transactions, commercial volumes, etc., real, budgeted, or simulated) and model structures to facilitate the administration of costs and performance in Equivida.
The evolution of the ABC to the ABM has been possible thanks to the impulse of the General Management, the leadership of the Financial Management and its Planning and Costs team, the involvement of the Management of each Area, the specialized guide of Performance Empresarial, and the MyABCM support.
Unimed
“The help we received from MyABCM’s tech support was beyond our expectations. Their level of support was outstanding and they were always available to help us with whatever we needed. They maintained this high standard even after the implementation of the tool, and they now help with the extraction of all the types of information that we need to generate our various analysis reports.”
Carlos Simões
Comptroller
Unimed – Rio
COMPANY
Unimed-Rio is a medical cooperative that’s been in business for 38 years and has more than 770 thousand customers, making it the leader in the health plan market in Rio de Janeiro. Founded and managed by doctors seeking better conditions for the practice of medicine, it seeks to provide the highest excellence in service for the largest possible number of people.
To take care of so many lives, Unimed-Rio’s cooperative has more than 5,300 doctors with 50 different specialties who are partners in the company and are located throughout all the regions of the city. Nationally, the Unimed system provides coverage for 30% of plan holders in Brazil.
CHALLENGE
To improve the management of costs and expenses and to get to know them in greater detail, which is fundamental to sustaining Unimed-Rio’s business. To seek cost reductions through more advanced and accurate analyses of this business’s characteristics.
SOLUTION
MyABCM’s ABC costing program was chosen to meet these expectations technically and financially. Now we can elaborate detailed analyses of all types of cost objects, covering all the company’s activities, and seek total unit costs that are very close to the business reality.
RESULTS
The ABC costing system offered by MyABCM has allowed us to perform a very specific mapping of our most relevant business costs, identifying precisely all the costs generated by this process. The implementation of the ABC methodology has created a new commitment to improve the control of our activities, and now we intend to disseminate these gains generated by this application throughout the entire company to change our culture in every area.
France TV
Website: www.france.tv
Industry: Public broadcasting
Specialties: Broadcasting, Radio and Web portals
Founded: 1992
INTRODUCTION
The largest French television network, with 7 channels, France Télévisions is seen every week by 8 out of 10 viewers. The company is focused on its role in serving the public and seeks to address questions relevant to contemporary society as well as stimulate the country’s audiovisual production.
With a constant stream of ambitious projects that are innovative and explore new territory, as it digitalizes its content and exhibits it on the internet and produces and co-produces advertising through its agency France Télévisions Publicité, the company also has 8 subsidiaries and a number of radio stations.
SOLUTION
With such a complex group of activities, the company’s traditional Cost Management systems became obsolete, and thus they found it necessary to find a more robust tool with more refined functionality.
The project developed and implemented with the MyABCM solution has met all the company’s needs for costing and profitability information, and has become a key element in the formulation of corporate strategy.
CONTECON MANZANILLO, S.A DE C.V,
“Thanks to the support and training of the MyABCM team, in 3 months we were able to implement the cost model for our terminal, determine the drivers to transfer the cost from our balance to the activities and from these, to each of the Cost Objects that we had determined, always being able to have excellent traceability of all information.”
Ricardo Cabrera
Costs Department
México
COMPANY
CONTECON MANZANILLO, S.A DE C.V, is a Subsidiary of ICTSI (International Container Terminal Services, Inc.), a Filipino company founded in 1987. ICTSI has a presence around the world with 32 terminals; Africa, Asia, Europe and America. In America, ICTSI has terminals in: Ecuador, Brazil, Mexico, Honduras, Colombia and Argentina.
CHALLENGE
Port Services currently face greater competition and greater pressure to have good levels of profitability, so, not only an income statement is necessary; it’s necessary to have a process of cost management based on activities, where the actions of the entire organization are always aligned to the strategic aspects and profitability of the business; That’s why CONTECON MANZANILLO needed a tool to help us determine the profitability of each one of our maneuvers.
SOLUTION
Various tools in the market were analyzed and, of all those studied, the one that satisfied all the needs that the company required was the MyABCM tool for the following reasons:
RESULTS
Currently, MyABCM has helped us determine the profitability for each of the services provided by our company, with the detail that we want and with excellent traceability of all costs, as well as its drivers.
TEO
COMPANY
The TEO Group is part of the TeliaSonera Group and is one of the most experienced business groups in telecommunications in Lithuania. A provider of broadband internet access and telecommunications services, it offers integrated telecommunications, IT and TV services to residences and offices.
The TeliaSonera Group is one of the largest telecommunications companies in the Nordic and Baltic countries, with operations in 20 countries in Europe and Asia. Founded in 1992, it’s a private company focused on the customer and is the clear market leader in internet, data communication and landline services. It has more than 3,200 employees and 700,000 customers.
Thanks mainly to TEO, Lithuania is the country with the highest proportion of next generation fiber optic internet access in Europe according to the Fibre to the Home Council Europe. TEO’s mission is to be the best communications partner in a world that is constantly changing, employing the most innovative technologies and providing its customers with quick and easy access to people, knowledge and entertainment.
CHALLENGE
TEO needed to calculate the pricing for its services based on allocations using the principles established by the local regulatory body. TEO is an innovative company which uses the latest IT technology. It began an intense search for software that would offer it the greatest opportunities to calculate and analyze costs based on activities as well as the costs of its services and its profitability, while at the same time being compatible with the latest version of Microsoft Windows.
SOLUTION
TEO chose the MyABCM solution as the best one for its cost analyses to create a better pricing plan. From the start, MyABCM has proven to be an easy to use and easy to understand cost analysis tool. Consequently, the software’s implementation and training took just 1 week.
RESULTS
The solution’s use in the company has been continually expanding and currently goes far beyond regulatory needs. The MyABCM costing program allows TEO to analyze processes which helps it make more informed decisions. Currently TEO is using the latest version of the application which supports the most advanced methods of costing, thus enabling the firm to make assertive decisions.
The Argentine Institute of University Professors of Costs (IAPUCo) is a civil association that brings together professors and specialists in the area of Costs and related matters in Argentina. It was founded on October 27, 1977 at the First Conference of University Professors of Costs, held in the City of Buenos Aires. IAPUCo is currently the oldest entity of its kind in the country.
In 2020, IAPUCo’s Socially Responsible Business School (ENSR) launched its platform of virtual courses for students and professionals, where various topics specifically related to costs and management are addressed.
Why did you choose MyABCM solutions for your classes?
In the Activity-Based Costing and Management course, the teachers knew the MyABCM tool from previous implementations in the development of their professional work, as well as from previous academic use. This made it the first choice, considering that it is a tool that shows the application of the specific theme of the course.
How has MyABCM improved classes?
Being able to observe firsthand how the ABC system is implemented in real life is very enriching for students, as it allows them to have a concrete idea of the application and the possibilities for further analyses based on the processing of the data loaded in the MyABCM software.
How does MyABCM support the teaching and learning process?
In the course, we directly use the tool in case of application in one of the classes, while in another we show the different tables and graphs obtained for the analysis of information for decision-making.
IBP has chosen MyABCM to improve its rebilling model
COMPANY
IBP, an entity of BPCE SI, is a software house company serving Banque Populaire, Caisse d’Epargne and multiple subsidiaries of the BPCE group. Its teams of experts work on the development of the information systems of these entities. In addition, they are specialized in the creation, testing and launch of IT applications for the insurance and financial services businesses: consumer credit, factoring, leasing and other related services.
CHALLENGE
The IBP’s IT billing model had maintenance and scalability difficulties due to its reliance on Excel. Collaboration and information sharing were limited, and the creation of simulation scenarios was not possible with simple spreadsheets. The goal was also to provide the operational departments with the ability to analyze the results.
A tool was needed to streamline and secure the processing of multiple source data. Limitations of Excel included the difficulty of evolving the model, sharing results, comparing multiple scenarios, the high risk of errors, and the difficulty for one user to pass on knowledge to another. MyABCM had advantages over Excel, particularly with regard to output, which was limited in Excel.
SOLUTION
The company wanted to switch to a specific tool such as MyABCM to automate its entire rebilling process.
The choice of tool
Following the choice of BPCE IT, the choice of MyABCM was an obvious one for IBP. In addition, the reasonable price compared to competitors was a determining factor.
RESULTS
For IBP, the implementation of MyABCM has been a success, as it provides a clear understanding of business and cost effects by linking them to the corresponding volumes. The group has found the restitution and traceability features to be valuable assets. In addition, MyABCM provides simulation capabilities and increases productivity, as the head of management control noted.
“In addition to promoting benchmarking actions, supporting the asset valuation of stocks, and helping to set public prices, the use of the MyABCM solution has optimized the practice of measuring unit costs for the benefit of continuous improvement and quality goals of public spending within the Air Force.”
Samara Lima e Andrade
Captain
Brazilian Air Force
COMPANY
Founded in 1942, FAYS has an area of 6,502 hectares in the State of São Paulo. It is a Military Organization of the Brazilian Air Force, whose mission is the productive occupation of the land of the Pirassununga Air Force Garrison with agricultural activities, resulting in the production of foodstuffs that are sold internally and externally to the organization, according to the Strategic Planning in force.
CHALLENGE
Public opinion has become increasingly demanding regarding the efficiency of public management and the optimization and improvement of public spending, culminating in strengthening the cost culture as a promising solution to achieve these goals. FAYS surveyed the costs of processes and macro-processes to meet the organizational need for knowledge of historical unit cost of assets produced by the Treasury. They also studied ways to track indirect costs to assist management.
SOLUTION
Among the available options to improve the quality of public spending and know the unit cost of produced assets, the ABC (Activity Based Costing) method was the most appropriate. From the study of the specific case and the construction of cost matrices that reflect the management practices, the application of the ABC method allowed the in-depth analysis of primary processes, those considered essential for the fulfillment of the institutional mission, with their respective allocations along the complex chain designed. In turn, the use of the MyABCM software made it possible, in an uncomplicated way, to mathematically operationalize the calculations for the measurements of interest, making the project feasible.
RESULTS
Beyond guiding the setting of public pricing, the valuation of production stocks, the retro analysis of operational practices employed in the production chain, the promotion of performance improvement of managers through benchmarking actions, product reengineering, waste reduction, as well as the feasibility of changes in the current portfolio, the practice of measuring unit costs of goods produced by the Treasury can certainly be used as a tool for continuous improvement for the organization.
The MyABCM software made it easy to mathematically operationalize calculations for unit cost measurements, making the project feasible.
“Today, we have everything tied up with MyABCM: understanding the main business dimensions, analysis of individual targets… I can say that without MyABCM, it would be extremely difficult today to manage the organization with the agility that it demands.”
Jullian Soares
Controller Manager
Quatá Foods
COMPANY
With 30 years of history, Quatá, a dairy products manufacturer, impresses with its potential and speed of growth. The company, founded in 1990 in the countryside of São Paulo, started its operations with only 16 employees and a processing capacity of 3,000 liters of milk per day. Today, the company is responsible for more than 1,600 jobs and has a production capacity of around 1.1 million liters of milk a day. The industrial plant has expanded and currently six factories are producing the various goods in the industry’s portfolio, which includes dry and refrigerated lines among cheeses, kinds of milk, creams, zero lactose options, and specialty cheeses.
The challenges of a booming business
Growth is undoubtedly one of the greatest goals of any business. However, it is a process that brings with it great challenges. And for Quatá it was no different. The company uses in its management one of the best ERPs available in the market, TOTVS. However, even with all its versatility, the platform proved to be insufficient to offer the level of detail required to control the indirect costs of such a complex industry. Thus, to support the cost management process, Quatá employed in its logistics and distribution areas a costing model partially by absorption and by activities, using Excel spreadsheets.
Even with the association of these resources, the company still had difficulty in visualizing the costs of all the processes accurately and productively. With a varied portfolio and different production methods, one of the biggest challenges was to efficiently measure profitable and loss-making products. In this context, the production of the industry’s refrigerated goods line proved to be particularly challenging. With an almost manual process for manufacturing their specialty cheeses, accurate costing was not an easy task, but it was a must.
The choice of MyABCM to support Quatá’s cost and profitability management
MyABCM has provided Quatá with the possibility of implementing a new cost management model, capable of serving all sectors of the business, integrating smoothly with the ERP already in use. The cost modeling by activities (ABC/M) is now applied from the industrial plant, in the Production area, to the Commercial sector (covering delivery, logistics, and customer service) and also in the back office and the correct allocation of the indirect costs of the business.
The company, which does accounting and management closing every 5th business day, uses MyABCM to extract various dimensions of analysis, which are then published at a very high level of detail. Through integration with Power BI, the findings are quickly made available for viewing by the entire company, which can use the data provided to improve the decision-making process.
Results provided by MyABCM
Quatá is a company that is growing a lot and it is essential to understand where it is making and losing money, so one of the company’s greatest gains was in the diversity of the performance information and its analysis. And the outcome of this process is the empowerment of the management teams, who now have much more control over the business performance, since strategic decisions are taken based on the data provided by the software. Among them, it is worth highlighting the contribution margin analysis, which is now performed by Product, Channel, Customer, Management, Salesman, Representative, and Region.
With this detailed vision, Quatá has gained an important competitive advantage. The tools of the MyABCM solution are also used for Planning and Budgeting, in addition to providing historical budget data and solutions for scenario simulations that are fundamental in pricing studies and in obtaining sophisticated forecasts.
This is another benefit of great prominence for the organization. With the agility of the market transformations in the dairy segment, being ready for all the possible unfolding of the sector facing economic and supply chain fluctuations put Quatá ahead of the competition. And it is not only in preparing for market fluctuations that the resources for costing, simulation, and scenario forecasting have optimized Quatá’s operations. The industry launches several products every year. As such, the previous studies with the application of target costing techniques produced with the support of MyABCM are a fundamental pillar in the decision-making process regarding these new launches.
According to the Controller Manager, Jullian Soares, who was responsible for the implementation of costing in Excel and later led the MyABCM project at Quatá, “The model has to make conceptual sense for the business. Today, we have everything tied to MyABCM: understanding key business dimensions, individual goal analysis… I can say that without MyABCM, it would be extremely difficult today to manage the organization with the agility that it demands.”
It is also important to note that the support of the MyABCM support team was evaluated by Quatá’s board as fundamental throughout this process. Not only for their experience with the platform itself and its tools but also their knowledge in the implementation of the activity-based costing method and expertise with 100% dedication focused on the topic.
“MyABCM has allowed us to meet the needs for cost information, supporting and facilitating the strategic and operational decision-making of our company. With it, we were able to track cost and profitability information, obtaining an integrated view of these aspects, accelerating the processing of analyses, and data availability. We gained more transparency and autonomy by reducing dependence on spreadsheets and external support to operate and process our Cost Model.”
Pablo Pfingsthorn,
Manager
Chile, Peru
COMPANY
Entel is a leading technology and telecommunications company in the Chilean and Peruvian markets, with over 20 million mobile subscribers and approximately 11,000 kilometers of deployed fiber optic infrastructure. With a mission to ensure the continuity of interurban communications and provide long-distance international connectivity, the company offers mobile and fixed telephony services in the region, along with various digital and IT services supported by cutting-edge infrastructure.
CHALLENGE
With the expansion of services, technologies, and coverage areas offered in recent years, it became necessary to enhance the traceability of business cost information and provide a more agile integrated view of this data for the interested departments. Thus, Entel needed a system capable of managing the volume of data produced in its various activities and optimizing cost management.
SOLUTION
The MyABCM solution was chosen as ideal for the organization’s needs because it:
RESULT
MyABCM optimized the decision-making process by centralizing information, reducing the time for analysis issuance, and dependence on third parties for operating the cost model and obtaining information. Simultaneously, it clarified the business’s cost structure, offering management a precise view of the results brought by different services in each country.
