Electricity North West optimises financial performance with CCH® Tagetik
The Client
About
Electricity North West
Electricity North West (ENW) is one of 14 distribution network operators in the UK regulated by Ofgem. It serves over five million customers and is responsible for maintaining and upgrading 13,000 km of overhead power lines and more than 44,000 km of underground electricity cables across the region.
With a vision to lead the northwest to net zero by 2038, reduce the time people are without power by 20% and deliver at least 9/10 level of customer service, ENW’s business plan outlines £1.8bn investment from 2023-2028. Through competitive funding, the energy supplier will ensure its network is fit for the future to enable the transition from fossil fuels to low carbon electricity.
Understanding the Problem
The Challenge
To deliver on its ambitious plan and adhere to regulatory compliance, the network operator’s operational IT will play a huge role. The ability to provide better financial reporting and insights is critical to helping senior leaders make smarter decisions, act faster and drive this business transformation.
From a forecasting, budgeting and reporting perspective, ENW needs to have a true and accurate picture of its financial performance at any given time. But the finance team had been experiencing considerable performance issues with its legacy on premise finance system, leading to frustrations by users and taking up a lot of IT resource to undertake remedial tasks to keep the system going.
The organisation’s accountants were struggling to obtain real time financial data from the system and the ability to run reports had significant shortcomings. In addition, the sheer volume of data that ENW had accumulated over the years was slowing the system and needed to be cleaned and optimised.
With a new CEO, organisational transformation and ambitious targets to reach over the next five years, being able to scrutinise the numbers and do accurate budgeting and forecasting will be critical to our business.Finance Systems Business Analyst, ENW
The Solution
Making it Work
Codestone implemented CCH Tagetik Cloud platform to provide all the financial analysis, annual budgeting, forecasting and regulatory reporting that ENW needs in a single solution. As part of the project Codestone also cleaned the data which included years of historic information that was no longer required. The result was that only one third of historic reports were still required, significantly improving performance.
Connecting directly with ENW’s SAP and the Master Data, CCH Tagetik delivers the capability for the finance team to align all finance activities with the business operations. Previously ENW’s accountants waited for three hours to see posted data and be able to identify any discrepancies, now it takes less than 30 minutes. And the team has clear visibility on budgeting across the organisation, ensuring each department knows exactly what their spend is at any given moment, and how much resource can be allocated per activity.
Regulated reporting to Great Britain’s energy regulator Ofgem requires the annual disclosure of certain information such as how much training has been carried out and in which areas of the business. CCH Tagetik’s compliance functionality provides that capability, reducing risk and giving the finance team the confidence that it is fulfilling regulatory enforcement.
Having CCH Tagetik in the cloud gives ENW much more flexibility, so the finance team spends more time on analysis and value-add activities, using the system’s built-in financial and predictive intelligence tools for reporting and visualisations. With real-time visibility and intuitive dashboards, the finance team can focus on improving business process and carry out effective financial planning across the organisation.
Stephen Neild, Finance Systems Business Analyst at ENW says, “With a new CEO, organisational transformation and ambitious targets to reach over the next five years, being able to scrutinise the numbers and do accurate budgeting and forecasting will be critical to our business.”
Codestone has delivered a cloud solution that runs efficiently, automatically backs up and works, without the need for costly ongoing IT support. And when we need specific training, we call on the Codestone team who help us get the most from CCH Tagetik.Finance Systems Business Analyst, ENW
Discover the Benefits
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ENW has streamlined its business processes with unified financials leading to better reporting, better insights and better decision-making.
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Time savings have been achieved with the simplified production of financial, management, statutory and regulatory reports, so that accountants spend less time creating reports manually and more time analysing.
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Increased financial agility and audit trails with the cloud solution provides greater transparency and control.
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ENW has reduced the need for ongoing IT support with a high performance system that is always ‘on’.
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Automated compliance with accurate reporting provides the assurance that Ofgem regulatory requirements are being met in a timely manner, with reduced complexity and risk.
Our relationship with Codestone is superb; the engagement and technical expertise we got from their team was absolutely key to the success of this project. Our new CCH Tagetik cloud solution meets the approval of the Board’s requirement for accurate, fast financial reporting and our Ofgem regulatory compliance needs.Finance Systems Business Analyst, ENW