Tronox’s finance transformation journey to planning and reporting in the Cloud
Client:
Tronox Holdings Public Limited CompanyChallenge:
- Existing Hyperion solution was nearing end of life for support
- Greater insight into budget, sales and production data was required
- Multiple systems inherited due to dramatic growth
Solution:
- A contemporary, digital cloud-based solution to drive business planning decisions
- Oracle Planning: a planning, budgeting and forecasting solution that integrates financial and operational planning processes to improve business predictability
- DXC Red Rock Accelerate Templates for mining and manufacturing providing end-to-end application design underpinned by industry best practice
Results:
- A new user experience, improved forecasting accuracy with modern digital functionality
- Greater access, faster calculations and response time, minimal risk of downtime
- Ability for deeper ‘what-if’ and other analysis
- Automatic updates and significantly reduced IT support costs
Tronox is a NYSE-listed vertically integrated producer of titanium dioxide and inorganic chemicals. Tronox mines and processes titanium ore, zircon and other materials and manufactures titanium dioxide pigment, specialty-grade titanium dioxide products and high-purity titanium chemicals. Their products add brightness and durability to paints, plastics, paper and other everyday products.
Tronox has a global footprint, with nearly 7,000 employees across six continents, and are the world’s leading integrated manufacturer of titanium dioxide pigment.
As a global leader in the mining, production and marketing of inorganic minerals and chemicals, and with an uncompromising focus on operating safe, reliable and responsible facilities, all work done by the IT team at Tronox is focused on providing technology that supports safe, quality production at the lowest possible cost. Lee Albert, IT Project Manager for Tronox commented, “We seek to achieve our organisation’s vision by enhancing the value chain from the mining side all the way down to the titanium dioxide production and packaging.”
Challenge
DXC Red Rock has worked as a close strategic advisor to Tronox since implementing Hyperion Planning on premise some 14 years ago. Since then, Tronox has experienced significant growth and as a result, inherited multiple systems.
With the existing Hyperion solution reaching end of life for support, and as part of its broader digital transformation strategy, Tronox turned to DXC Red Rock to help select and implement a new cloud-based planning, budgeting and forecasting solution.
Tronox, like many organisations had unique requirements, but was looking to address common sales planning and logistics issues, for example, travelling with empty loads. The company sought a contemporary, digital solution to drive business planning decisions.
Solution
DXC Red Rock analysed how Tronox could leverage new digital technologies in the cloud. Oracle Planning, part of Oracle Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) Cloud, was selected for its user interface, strong functionality on mobile platforms, and SmartView Excel add-in.
Albert commented, “Our motivation to move to a cloud solution stemmed from DXC Red Rock’s recommendations. We were guided by them and felt strongly that a cloud solution was ideal. Oracle Planning provided a much better solution in the cloud at a much lower cost with very little overheads in terms of IT support. In addition, the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model provides constant upgrades every month. That means we get new capability, functionality, and power within the application every month.”
Oracle Planning provides a fantastic platform for organisations of any type to deliver a true digital transformation for their organisation. Mark Simpson, General Manager Analytics Practice for DXC Red Rock said, “Typically, budgeting and forecasting tools like this have been used for workforce and revenue planning. However, with the application now so powerful, scalable, and flexible we can easily deliver functionality like the complex processing model required by Tronox.”
Results
Moving Tronox’s legacy on-premise Hyperion Planning solution to the cloud drove significant change across the business and delivered a new user experience, improved performance and more modern digital functionality. It's reliable, accurate, and calculates in real time, allowing Tronox to produce an integrated set of numbers that models the business accurately while utilising the knowledge and experience of a range of people all working in the system at once.
The solution delivered is very comprehensive and helps Tronox from an operational perspective by modelling its entire complex processing, delivery, logistics, and sales journey from raw material all the way through to customer satisfaction. It has changed the way Tronox people interact with data and provides greater access and higher availability. This means improved reliability, faster calculations and response time, minimal risk of downtime, and better overall forecasting accuracy.
Oracle Planning enables opportunities for Tronox to further accommodate new sources of feedstock (raw materials) and the solution can grow with the business as required. Modelling can also be extended to other parts of the organisation and it provides flexibility for a more diverse workforce because people can access systems from anywhere, including some of the very remote areas that Tronox operates in.
Albert commented “The solution is browser agnostic and works on mobile platforms. Our sales managers (who travel a lot) can update their forecast in the back of a taxi in South Korea on the way to the airport. That was not previously possible, so efficiency gains are enormous, and the ability to access our data from wherever we may be geographically means we can make the best decisions for the business quickly.”