Large-scale Service Solutions
The work being done in financial modeling and management is focused on combining important financial data repositories, standardized financial models, key performance indicators (KPIs) and sophisticated data analytics to develop of a unified infrastructure for large-scale service solutions.
Important financial analysis and data management, such as the costing of products or labor based services, pricing and portfolio budget management, are quite often done in an ad hoc fashion using non-standardized manual processes with spreadsheet tools and techniques. Important historical financial data is often distributed among individuals instead of within the organization, where a person's laptop becomes a central data repository. These issues can result in errors in financial analysis, process inconsistencies and inefficiencies and loss of critical financial data and organizational memory around projects--resulting in unforeseen costs for both suppliers and clients.
Financial Modeling and Management is a research project investigating and delivering a technology to aid in the improvement of internal processes to avoid unforeseen costs for IBM and its clients. The technology consists of standardized financial models, financial tools, a central data repository, historical financial data analytics functions, dashboard for metrics and KPIs and a feedback loop to optimize the financial models through examination of prior project data and comparison with established metrics and KPIs. The financial models are built using standardized formulas comprising of models that define unit roll-out and unit rates. The financial tools have comprehensive reporting features, trade-off analysis capability, financial case comparison functions and data sharing. The repository stores important financial data and enables secure information query and retrieval with a data service layer built on top.
