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Customer stories

Transforming Global Financial Operations 

For this global marketing and communications group, growth had created complexity. Financial and project data was spread across multiple regions, agencies and systems, making clear visibility hard to achieve. Fragmented data, slow reporting cycles and inconsistent processes were holding teams back, limiting their ability to manage risk, track performance and make confident decisions at pace.

To address these issues, the organisation partnered with a specialist finance transformation consultancy, Sempre Analytics, renowned for its expertise in data integration, reporting, and governance.

What started as a brief to deliver a mixture of project and financial information to global business leaders through Microsoft SQL and IBM Cognos Analytics reports, has evolved into a multi-year engagement, in which Sempre Analytics has delivered a complete transformation of the group’s data and reporting capabilities and worked with individual agencies within the group to transform resource planning and demand planning.

Key Outcomes

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Unified global visibility across financial and operational performance for regions and agencies.

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Faster reporting and data access, including a 70% reduction in data load times.

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Greater efficiency through automated reporting and reduced manual data extraction.

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Improved decision-making with timely, accurate insight into profitability, risk, overdue payments, and project performance.

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Stronger governance and data quality through standardised reporting, version control, common processes, and greater trust in data.

The Challenge

A Global Reporting Challenge Rooted in Data Complexity

As with many global enterprises, one of the key challenges faced by the customer was multiple ERP systems that created data silos. Reporting was further hampered by manual processes making the reporting process slow and inconsistent across the various agencies. This in turn limited visibility for the individual agencies in the group on project overspend, overdue payments, and profitability by agency. As the project progressed and reporting issues were resolved the project team were keen to find other ways to improve efficiency. Performance issues in legacy data warehouse processes delayed access to data by hours, making this the obvious next target to resolve. These challenges are common. As businesses grow and evolve, the foundations; data storage, integration, quality and reporting start to creak.

The Solution

Building a Scalable Foundation for Global Reporting

Sempre Analytics implemented a robust, scalable data and reporting framework that evolved alongside the client’s global transformation program over several years. Projects delivered in that time include;

  • Data Integration & Reporting: Sempre worked with the group to design the reporting of business-critical information. The work involved consolidating project and financial data including costs, timesheets, invoicing, WIP, and revenue recognition into a centralised SQL Server data warehouse, and later migrating to Azure Synapse for distributed, high-performance processing.
  • ERP Migration Support: Guided the transition from Microsoft AX 2012 to Microsoft Dynamics 365 across three global instances (US/UK, EMEA, APAC), ensuring seamless data migration and reporting continuity.
  • Performance Optimisation: Reduced data load times by 70% through parallel processing and optimised pipelines, enabling near real-time reporting. Business analysis and guidance to agencies on data sourcing, modelling and reporting.
  • Governance & Consistency: Introduced version control and governance tools for IBM Cognos reporting, ensuring accuracy, auditability, and collaboration across geographically dispersed teams. Onboarding new agencies with analysis, data migration, reports, and support services.
  • Scalable Architecture: Built a future-proof platform capable of supporting regional variations, tax modules, and evolving business requirements.
  • Agency Planning and Forecasting Capabilities – Beyond the group reporting Sempre has worked with individual agencies on extended planning projects such as the implementation of bespoke work-force planning tools that deliver on organisational priorities.

Business Benefits

Unlocking Efficiency, Governance and Global Performance Visibility

One of the greatest benefits is global visibility of a unified view of financial and operational performance across regions and agencies. Additional benefits include, efficiency gains derived from automating reporting saving thousands of man-hours and replacing manual data extraction with dynamic dashboards. Faster access to accurate data has enabled timely, informed decisions on profitability, risk exposure, and project performance. The team has also benefited from economies of scale via a centralised finance operations and standardised reporting structure. This has reduced duplication and improved consistency across the group. The group has also benefited from enhanced data quality having worked with Sempre to embed common processes across the group, driving better governance and trust in data.

By leveraging Sempre’s deep expertise in EPM and data management, the organisation has transformed its ability to manage complexity, scale globally, and make confident, data-driven decisions.

Working with Sempre

Sempre helps ambitious organisations build the finance capabilities needed to support growth.

As businesses expand, finance teams face increasing pressure to close faster, plan with confidence, deliver trusted insights and provide investor-grade reporting. We help organisations bridge the gap between their current finance capability and what their strategy demands by transforming the people, processes, data and technology that underpin performance.

Our expertise spans finance transformation, enterprise performance management, data management, planning, analytics, automation and AI readiness. Working across a variety of industries, we help organisations improve decision-making, increase operational efficiency and create a stronger foundation for sustainable growth.

Working with leading technology partners including Microsoft, IBM, Anaplan, Informatica and Automation Anywhere, we deliver practical transformation programmes focused on business outcomes, not technology projects. Our approach is consultative, outcome-driven and centred on helping organisations build the confidence, control and visibility needed to achieve their ambitions.