Publishing House

Implementing MYGIDE in fast changing environment often with several adjustment requirements a day.

Implementation orchestrated by newly employed people in the company.

Implementation intertwined with budgeting period.

The company publishes daily newspaper with an emphasis on business and economic news and various periodicals. It also organizes business events and conferences and operates digital services and contemplates broadcasting a digital TV service.

The newly appointed CFO approached us shortly after the publishing house was acquired by a large media group. The initial task was to provide, within one week, an in-depth analysis of the company’s actual performance and to produce an updated forecast for the year-end. Later the project was extended to include development of a complete set of 36 consolidated models, including individual models for each publication, events and conferences and digital services.

The company’s existing data source entailed a mid-market accounting package, providing the elementary general ledger accounts only and various standalone operational spreadsheets produced across different departments.

The company’s team involved in the process consisted of 2 personnel orchestrating the process and some 20 information providers. Many of the personnel were actually newly employed.

The implementation took place during the budgeting period and closing the books for fiscal year-end. Further, the company was in the process of acquiring new business, which were required to be included into the consolidation in MYGIDE and discontinuing some other business lines. The company also decided to change its organisational structure (and number of departments) and the composition of its general ledger as far as the number and type of the accounts it was going to use. As the result, MYGIDE had to continuously adjust models and model structure, merge, recode, deconsolidate and reconsolidate while making sure that it kept consistency of historical, forecast and budgeted data. All this while keeping rolling forecast up-to-date and preparing a new budget for the following year.

MYGIDE provided the company a consolidated and individual overview of all business line/publications, incorporating operational models with all the key business model drivers (number of prints, circulation, returned prints, subscribers, etc.).

The consolidated overview included general ledger accounts, profit and loss statement, balance sheet, cash flow statement, capex, cash balance.

This all available in a data modelling environment enabling the company not only to analyse historical performance of the last three years on a monthly basis, but also anticipate likely future financial performance, while fully benefiting from MYGIDE seasonality formulas, which take into account seasonal nature of companies activities.

The entire implementation was executed rapidly with the limited human resources on the company’s side and the scattered data sources.

The requirements of the company holding on, e.g. changes in pricing, print volumes, etc. can now be assessed in a holistic fashion – understanding the impact on future cash flow and its impact on the company financials.

• 7th Day

  Analysis of the company performance with year-end forecast (4 months to go) and followed by 5 year plan for the company as a whole.

• 14th Day

  The model was extended with 35 operational and business support models.

• 21th Day

  All accounting and operational data imports of 3 year history on monthly basis for each model.

• 24th Day

  Rolling forecast updates, following year budgeting process started, involving a series of meetings with the company’s personnel.

• 45th Day

  The budget presented to the holding company.

• 60th Day

  MYGIDE model adjustments reflecting the acquisition of new business, year-end closing accounts, the changes in the structure of departments and the composition of the general ledger.

• 90th Day

  MYGIDE routinely used to address office of finance future challenges.