KMG (Performance Chemicals)

KMG is a specialist provider of performance chemicals listed on the NYSE with revenues of $330m. Headquartered in Fort Worth Texas the group includes 12 subsidiaries around the world.

Challenge

To address issues of extensive preparation times and limited analytics they were looking to replace an outdated spreadsheet based planning and forecasting process.

After extensive market research and trials with nearly all leading vendors in the analytics and planning space they chose the Acterys product with Managility as their service provider for the implementation.
In the end the key differentiators for the decision were:

• Business users at the finance department can entirely control the solution
• Integration of Acterys with Power BI and the Microsoft product stack
• Quick implementation times

Solution

The initial step to kick off the project was a Fast Start program in KMG’s Fort Worth head quarter. Within three days an initial prototype was realized that integrates KMG’s 11 ERP systems and automates the process for the collection of forecast numbers.
3 weeks later the full solution was deployed in 12 subsidiaries around the world. Users can easily enter their forecast numbers supported, with immediate insights into the implications of the assumptions and drivers directly integrated with the unparalleled analytics features in Power BI.

Outcomes

With Acterys KMG was able to cut down the time for building a model to half a day. Previously it took that time to just send a request to IT to prepare the model. Users love the ease of entering their numbers combined in conjunction with analytics features and responsive visualizations in Power BI.

All forecast submissions are directly entered in the central Acterys server and immediately available for analysis. Comprehensive governance is in place that enables administrators to exactly track any entry in the system. No time is wasted on collating spreadsheets and formula errors are a thing of the past.

Khaled Chowdhury, FP&A Manager at KMG commented on the results achieved: “Acterys gives us the flexibility to work with our existing Microsoft ecosystem. At the same time, it brought automation, proven processes and governance integrated with Power BI Excel on the front-end side. Users familiar with these environments can immediately work with the system, even extending and building new models. It has really revolutionized our processes.”

TECHNOLOGY USED

• Acterys
• Microsoft SQL Server
• Power BI