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Background
The company
The COGEP Group is France’s 8th-largest business consultancy firm. A specialist in chartered accountancy with 1,800 employees, it groups together 14 different areas of expertise across France.
The CIO team
Organized into departments, the CIO employs around fifty people across France, most of whom work at Group headquarters. The team has recently been reinforced by an IT Project Manager and a Security Manager.
The major challenges facing the CIO
- Supporting the Group’s strong growth
- Restructuring obsolete information systems
- Giving a new framework and a new lease of life to existing Teams
- Ensure the elasticity of systems and Teams (additional Resources)
- Implement processes to ensure quality of service and controlled growth of IT budgets
The need
A tool for structuring the CIO’s budget process and building unique reference systems
Benefits
- Construction of the budget tracking and management process
- Setting up a common Vendor repository
- Smoother collaboration with Controlling and Accounting departments
- Real-time budget tracking with key KPIs
The interview
Interviewed in August 2022, functions and scope may have changed since then*.
Aucun intervenant pour le moment
As a CIO, you address many fundamental issues, but on a day-to-day basis, what are your struggles, your difficulties, your irritants?
When I took up my post, I was confronted with the pitfall encountered by many CIOs: the scattering of data and the difficulty of consolidating an exhaustive, centralized view of steering data. When I arrived, a lot of information was available in the form of files, mostly in Excel, scattered in different directories, in different departments, and even in e-mails. The quality of the information was not always up to scratch, and it often took a long time to find it.
Why Abraxio?
I was one of Abraxio’s beta testers in 2019, so I had the chance to get to know the solution as soon as it was created as an ” early adopter”, but without being able to implement it immediately in my structure at the time, as several tools were already installed.
So, when I joined the Cogep Group, I seized the opportunity to deploy Abraxio to meet one of my objectives, which was to structure the CIO’s budgeting process. I wanted to centralize all information in a single tool, in the form of a single, structured repository that could be consulted by anyone who needed it.
So what do you do with the platform?
From the outset, I worked with my colleagues in Controlling and Accounting to build our budget management and tracking process around Abraxio. We capitalized on the framework provided by the platform, and on the integrated repositories – notably those of Cigref – to structure everything quickly.
All aspects of budget and contract management were implemented (Budgets and sub-budgets, Resources, Vendor management). The ease with which Abraxio could be parameterized and adapted was very useful for getting started quickly, while continuing to develop categorizations in line with our needs, our organization and our own internal qualification keys. We also didn’t have a supplier database before. Abraxio enabled us to build a common repository.
The solution has been in use for almost 2 years. Some of the team’s IT managers access it to feed Budgets, as does a CIO employee in charge of purchasing and invoicing. Abraxio is also accessible to a member of the management control team, enabling her to access information in real time, for the “run”, and if necessary toexport data easily for consolidation with other systems. We use Abraxio for our monthly trackings.
Our order and invoice management process has therefore been fully computerized via Abraxio, enabling real-time budget tracking with key KPIs, without the need to involve other company departments. Collaboration with management control is very fluid, as we work with the same data. Thanks to Abraxio, we can track cash flow in real time.
After 3 budget exercises integrated with Abraxio, I’m even more aware of the benefits of the platform, especially in the budget planning phase: the comparisons from one budget to the next, or the time saved on budget extension, are very interesting.
If you had to remember 3 benefits of Abraxio?
The first thing I notice is the efficiency of the platform. The Abraxio tab is always open on my workstation. This makes it easier for me to manage the CIO’s Budgets, and the KPIs are always within reach and up to date.
I also appreciate the ergonomics of the solution, as well as itsadaptability while offering an already structured framework. Abraxio is quick to implement, very intuitive and easy to use.
Last but not least, I appreciate the close collaboration with the Abraxio team. During the initial deployment of the solution, the team’s in-depth knowledge of the CIO’s business enabled them to be both efficient and consultative. I appreciated the fact that the support provided was tailored to my needs and environment, and was very “action-oriented”. Over time, I was able to appreciate the team’s Availability and Skills, as well as the various product evolutions, all of which met my expectations.
A final word in conclusion?
Once you’ve tried Abraxio, you can’t get enough. Go for it without hesitation!
*This testimonial represents feedback gathered at a given moment, in the professional context of the interviewee at the time he/she held the position mentioned. His functions and scope may have changed since then.
