Client background:

Client: Steel manufacturer
Industry type: Manufacturing
Products & Services: Steel & steel products
Areas of operations: USA, Canada, United Kingdom, Russia, Italy

Challenge

A leading North American steel manufacturer had long relied on manual product-costing processes. As new regulatory reporting requirements emerged, the manufacturer realized the need to improve its visibility into production costs and margins down to the SKU level. It also sought to bring reporting consistency across locations, which would enable granular impact analyses and improve organizational decision making.

Solution

Discussions with the manufacturer helped Wipro understand that costing analyses had historically been performed on ad-hoc basis using manual processes. In addition, a high level of data aggregation had impaired the steel company’s visibility into cost and profit information.

Wipro recommended a solution on the Oracle EPM Cloud platform to deliver accurate driver-based allocations. Using this platform, direct and indirect costs could be allocated using actual cost drivers for every step in production, regardless of location. In addition, profit margins for each SKU could be calculated using a multi-level allocation process, allowing the company to perform impact analyses for product costing and profit margins at a granular level across the enterprise.

Business Impact

• Accurate allocation of Cost at SKU level
• 25% faster cycle time for costing and margin analysis
• 30% reduction in time taken for data collection and reconciliation
• Regulatory compliance accomplished