At a glance
Manila Water Company, Inc. is a leading utility service provider in the Philippines and is part of Enrique Razon Jr.’s Prime Infra group. Manila Water partnered with High Insight to transform and automate its budgeting, forecasting, and financial reporting processes using SAP Business Data Cloud.
The solution brought financial planning and reporting processes together with a connected data foundation, enabling finance teams to manage budgets, forecasts, and management reporting through standardized and streamlined processes.
The challenge
Manila Water's budgeting, forecasting, and reporting activities involved multiple business areas and required significant coordination across finance and business teams. As it’s continued to evolve its financial planning processes, there was a need to make budgeting and forecasting faster, more efficient, and more responsive to changing business requirements.
The existing planning cycle involved significant effort and time to consolidate inputs, review assumptions, and prepare management reports. This limited the ability to quickly evaluate alternative business scenarios and respond to changing financial priorities.
The key objectives were to:
- Reduce the budgeting cycle duration through greater process automation
- Automate key budgeting and forecasting activities
- Enable finance teams to create and evaluate multiple planning scenarios
- Improve the speed of reviewing and consolidating planning inputs
- Provide greater visibility into the financial impact of different assumptions
- Streamline management reporting and reduce manual effort
- Establish a standardized and scalable planning process for future budget cycles
The High Insight Approach
High Insight leveraged its specialized expertise in SAP Planning, Reporting and Consolidation to design and implement an integrated planning and reporting solution powered by SAP Business Data Cloud.
The solution was designed around Manila Water's financial planning requirements, connecting data, planning processes, and reporting to provide a more structured and efficient approach to FP&A.
High Insight worked closely with Manila Water's finance and business teams to understand existing processes, design the target solution, develop planning models and reporting capabilities, and support the transition to the new way of working.
The Solution
The solution supported a comprehensive range of budgeting, forecasting, and financial planning requirements, including:
- Revenue Planning
- Workforce Planning
- OPEX Planning
- COGS Planning
- CAPEX Planning
- Balance Sheet Planning
- Income Statement Planning
- Cash Flow Planning
- Management Reporting
By bringing these planning and reporting requirements together with SAP Business Data Cloud, Manila Water established a more connected and standardized approach to financial planning and management reporting
Business Impact
Faster, More Structured Planning
Automating key budgeting and forecasting activities created a more streamlined planning cycle, reducing the effort required to collect, consolidate, and review planning inputs.
Connected Planning and Reporting
The solution connected planning data with financial reporting, enabling finance teams to work with a more consistent view of budgets, forecasts, and actual performance.
Reduced planning cycle timelines
Automation reduced the overall planning cycle by more than 75%, enabling finance teams to complete budgeting and forecasting activities significantly faster and with less manual effort
Improved Management Visibility
Management gained more timely and structured visibility into financial plans, forecasts, and performance, supporting better-informed business decisions.
Greater Planning Control
A standardized planning environment improved governance across planning cycles, providing greater consistency and control over assumptions, submissions, and financial data.
Client perspective
“The new planning environment has given us much greater visibility into our operations and significantly improved the speed and consistency of our decision-making processes.”
