Texas Instruments

Macrospect provided Texas Instruments with a financial planning solution that performs at the speed of Texas Instruments.

Situation:

Texas Instruments earned its place in computing history by pioneering the first integrated circuit in 1958. Today, TI employs over 30,000 people in 35 countries and is considered one of the foremost tech companies in the world. Still, when it came to internal budgeting, reporting and global currency forecasting, their 40-year-old mainframe wasn’t allowing them to see the whole picture. Key challenges they faced included:

  • Unable to view key performance metrics holistically
  • Cumbersome planning and consolidation processes
  • Limited employee access to numbers across the company
  • Global cash forecasting via Excel spreadsheets was slow and inaccurate
  • Company was vulnerable to foreign currency exchange loss
  • Historical data for products moved to new business units was complicated to access

Objectives:

  • Update financial systems to reflect TI’s visionary way of doing business
  • Provide tools to streamline business processes and revenue planning
  • Allow personnel around the globe greater access to financial data
  • Use SAP for Planning to forecast worldwide cash needs and reduce FX exposure
  • Preserve historical data across business units

Solution:

Streamlining business processes and revenue planning was a high priority for Texas Instruments. However, sometimes over the course of a project, new priorities arise. In this case, Macrospect helped TI reduce FX exposure by using SAP for Planning to forecast the cash needs of their global operations. Having the right currency in the right place at the right time gave TI a systematic way to address funding requests, which ultimately led to management gaining a clearer line of sight into their operations. Macrospect also designed a SAP for Planning solution that moved historical data forward when products changed business units, thus allowing TI to run accurate profitability analyses.

Benefits:

  • Consolidated data collection from multiple sources into a single powerful tool
  • Streamlined business process with integrated finance tools
  • User-friendly interface makes it easy for new employees to get up to speed
  • Global financial numbers provided in each subsidiary’s respective currency
  • Reduced global currency exchange exposure
  • Tracks products through 70,000 cost centers
  • Provides historical data when a product is moved to a new business unit

“I can now gather our worldwide currency exposure data in a matter of minutes instead of hours. We have an earlier view of our currency exposures, and the data is much easier for us to analyze. So we are better able to manage the impact of exchange rate fluctuations on our company.”

Bob Rifkin

Financial Reporting Manager, Texas Instruments
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