OREANDA-NEWS. August 07, 2013. The company RusHydro, the largest hydrogeneration company in Russia, has implemented a unified system of the medium-term business planning. The integrated platform IBM Cognos allows the company to operate with financial reporting and business planning processes in accordance with IFRS.

The project, developed for RusHydro in accordance with the requirements of IFRS and reflected the principles of transparence and standards of corporate management, started in 2011. Implementation of the new infrastructure was carried in two directions: the first direction was focused on organization of business planning and construction of bookkeeping reporting system, the second one – financial consolidation in compliance to IFRS. Project was carried out by two teams: the main contractor – GMCS, the member of GC “MAYKOR”, was responsible for business planning and financial reporting and ADE Professional Solutions that solved the tasks of the financial consolidation.

Vadim Nedotko, Director of business planning in RusHydro, notes: "The attention to financial responsibility is constantly growing, and the standards of corporate management are getting stringent, and it is a logical process. RusHydro is committed to respond quickly to changing requirements, because it affects the management of the whole enterprise. The need for building business intelligence system, which is fully controlling business processes, is dictated by the International Financial Reporting Standards. We wanted to use the best practices that have been already proven in the industry."

The transition to an integrated platform IBM Cognos was also important because from February 11, 2008 joint "HydroOGK" (from June 30, 2010 - "RusHydro") began trading on Russian
trading facilities. Therefore, the implementation of the tool that would allow to carry out financial consolidation with international standards, has been a fundamental task for RusHydro.

“Expertise and IBM solutions in the field of energy are developed under the concept of IBM Smarter Energy, or the Intelligent Energy. We have gained tremendous experience that we want to share with our partners around the world. IBM Cognos conquer Russia - already more than 69 regions of Russia, there are examples of successful implementation of such projects. In the energy sector, a similar system is already used by companies such as IDC Holding “E.ON Russia”,“- says Alexandr Tikhonov, Head of the Analytical Solutions Department IBM, IBM EE/A.

The platform IBM Cognos, implemented across RusHydro, consists of three modules: IBM Cognos Controller - a single, shared source for fast data access for up to 100 users, on the basis of which was implemented financial consolidation; IBM Cognos BI (for 600 users) provides representation of the reporting and IBM Cognos TM1 is optimized for 600 users and designed to meet the challenges of business planning. It significant that RusHydro has one of the most complex regulations on coordination of business plans, and the company is constantly growing – today RusHydro includes 19 branches and more than 60 subsidiaries. By the time the project was completed, the subsidiaries and the head office of RusHydro will get full-fledged, automated and user-friendly system that serves the needs of the holding in an integrated business intelligence. At the moment, RusHydro has already got tools for conducting medium-term planning at all stages of development, consolidation, coordination and approval of the budget in line with the strategic objectives and the current investment program of the generating company to control the execution of the budget and making adjustments.

Technological uniqueness of the project was the development of methods that was implemented by GMCS and ADE Professional Solutions to transfer the business plans in a format that matches the standards IFRS.

“The new system of planning and financial consolidation allows to centralize business process management of the holding company "RusHydro". The system allows to track changes in key processes, improves the efficiency of medium-term planning through the use of modeling scenarios, depending on changes in the external environment and internal environment. This enables the company to be more responsive and proactive, and therefore more effective,”- said Harald Bandurin, the Director of Information Technology, RusHydro.

“The project in RusHydro demonstrates the growing tendency of major Russian companies, including those who work with foreign counterparts, to move from automating the formation of IFRS to the preparation of a full business plan by international standards, and it is the task of an entirely different level of difficulty, - emphasizes Bela Temirkanov, the Project Manager, GMCS. - This problem was solved by us in RusHydro with our own developments to create the planning system based on IBM Cognos for sector Energy & Utilities”.