Corporate Performance Management (CPM) takes off at ATLAS AIR WORLDWIDE HOLDINGS
Company Overview
Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings (Atlas) is based in
Purchase NY and provides cargo air services through
its two subsidiaries, Atlas Air and Polar Air Cargo.
The Atlas Air subsidiary provides ACMI (aircraft,
crew, maintenance and insurance) leases for
supplemental cargo lift to passenger carriers and
chartered service to US military and commercial
companies throughout the world. Atlas Air was one of
the largest commercial providers of heavy cargo lift
to the US Government in preparation for operation
Desert Storm. Polar Air Cargo provides
airport-to-airport scheduled air cargo service
throughout the world. The company generated over one
billion dollars in revenue in 2003
Challenges Faced
The need for data integrity, comprehensive
financial reporting, and an enterprise level
planning solution made Atlas a perfect candidate for
Cognos’ Corporate Performance Management (CPM)
solution. This solution (figure 1) creates a data
warehouse, planning and reporting layer on top of
the
JD Edwards EnterpriseOne ERP
application. Through this solution, the data
warehouse is updated nightly with fresh transaction
data. This data warehouse also serves as the sole
source of financial data for the Cognos
reporting and planning solutions. This architecture
ensures data integrity is maintained throughout all
the applications and there truly is one version of
the truth.
The Corporate Performance Management solution was
also a natural fit with the company’s complex and
evolving needs. With Enterprise Planning, Atlas was
able to address the diverse business drivers present
in its two distinct lines of business. This allows
financial and operating targets to be generated from
a comprehensive planning model. Further, Atlas also
has the Business Intelligence tools to rapidly
conduct analysis on its planned and actual
performance. Last, the solution provides for a
comprehensive reporting capability such that
financial statements are generated quickly and are
accessed throughout the organization via the web.
Benefits Realized
The implementation of the CPM solution was
completed in less than six months and immediately
started delivering benefits.
- Atlas is now able to generate financial
plans by flight route. Meaning, if a flight
schedule is expected to change to a more or less
costly route, the planning group is able to
quickly understand and communicate the economic
impact of that change.
- Consolidation of financial plans is now an
automated process, allowing Atlas to rapidly
develop and analyze business plan scenarios.
- On the reporting side, much of the manual
intervention and Excel spreadsheets have been
replaced with “automated” financial statement
generation. The company has seen a significant
reduction in the effort and time required to
publish its financial statements.
In the future, Atlas is looking to complete its
Corporate Performance Management solution by
implementing Cognos Metrics Manager. This
application will provide rapid updates on financial
and operating metrics critical to the business
performance. This will help to focus the
organization on the business decisions that matter
most.
Click Here
to Download a PDF of this Success Story |
Terms
of Use
