As manager of group budgeting and forecasting for Suncorp, JohnHerrmann had a goal for the Australian financial services companyto get its multiple planning systems on a single platform. "Thatwas my one vision," he says.

Suncorp had been involved in several mergers and acquisitions,and so, with multiple operations, the word from top management wasto conduct more strategic planning. "Because of all the mergers, wewere consumed by transformation mode," says Herrmann.

Suncorp offers customers consumer and business banking, wealthmanagement, life insurance, and property/casualty insurance. Thereare multiple financial service products, and they all aredistributed through the one Suncorp network.

With too much of Suncorp's focus on short-term planning, recallsHerrmann, the carrier had to consider a longer-term planning phase.However, "we really needed to have good systems to be able to dothat," he says. "You can't do a lot of good planning with justExcel."

Suncorp had been using a budgeting system that Herrmannindicates was somewhat suitable for expenses but gave the plannersplenty of headaches. The carrier went out to the market to searchfor a best-of-breed solution two years ago and evaluated multiplevendors before choosing Cognos. "We thought it was the beststrategic fit and gave us the best opportunity to get into planningand my vision of what needed to happen," he says.

One of the factors in the decision to purchase the Cognossolution was the blueprints that were available, which allowedHerrmann's budget department to pick through what each businessunit had done in the past. "We had six years of multidimensionaldatabase expertise," he says. "We didn't want to spend six monthsgoing around in circles, so we saw the expense blueprints andthought they were particularly useful. The general functionality iswhat we were after."

The property/casualty insurance division where Herrmann worksdid not have great leverage in terms of what it could get the otherproduct divisions to go along with, he explains, so he pushed forthe Cognos implementation based on expense reporting.

Because of the nature of Suncorp's operations, a large portionof the company's expenses are managed through a shared servicearrangement, continues Herrmann. "We're not siloed at all," hesays. "Our expense base is a bit different than mostcompanies."

With the problems Suncorp was having managing budgets, Herrmannfelt confident any implementation would be looked on as an upgrade.The short rollout period of four months also excited the company."We knew what the stakeholders wanted and what the functionalitywas," he says. "The purpose of going with the expense model was tosell both the product and my department's vision to the rest of theorganization. To get my total vision on board, I had to get theinsurance people, the banking people, and the wealth managementpeople to build their revenue models so we could get a finalP&L. Previously the P&Ls [from the various divisions] wouldcome to [Herrmann's department], and we would consolidate them inthe wonderful world of Excel."

Herrmann reports the expense model got rave reviews throughoutthe company. "A lot of the people involved in the revenue side weretouched by the expense models to some degree, and they could seeopportunities to build their revenue models within the sametoolset," he says. "It was a successful marketing exercise on ourpart."

In addition, the Cognos account manager at that time andHerrmann had what he calls "a couple of throwaway words with eachother" about getting Cognos to build a performance blueprint forthe carrier, and the idea grew. "Unlike the expense model, wedidn't have a lot of the intelligence behind [the blueprints]mapped out," he says.

Transparency and visibility are the keys to what Suncorp hasbeen after in this exercise because those are what Excel doesn'tprovide, Herrmann points out. "We do a fairly detailed budget forexpenses," he says. "We budget a bit more granularly than otherpeople. It's hard work upfront for us, but it saves theorganization a lot of time if the managers happen to go off theroad [with their budgets]. The first part of my jigsaw is in place,and we're happy with the progress we've made."