Fresh Del Monte moves to Cognos Performance Management Solution

Fresh Del Monte is a leading global producer and distributor of high-quality fresh and fresh-cut fruit and vegetables, and a top producer and distributor of prepared fruit, vegetables and other products in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In order to achieve greater financial transparency, automate financial processes and improve controls, the company elected to upgrade its consolidation and management reporting systems. As Fresh Del Monte expands globally, the diversity of its business operations also scale accordingly. The company requires efficient, flexible, web-architected financial consolidation and planning tools that can easily support business model changes, multi-currency requirements, automate the consolidation process, reduce the time to close and provide greater transparency in alignment with compliance regulations.

'Financial consolidation plays a lead role at a corporate level for performance management. Our consolidation capabilities compress the time to close and give users an automated method to make decisions and report with confidence in spite of the fast-changing business environment and regulatory scrutiny,' said David Brierley, regional manager, Cognos Middle East and Africa.

'Combining financial consolidation with our leading planning and business intelligence capabilities provides decision makers with consistent information, an effective, transparent system of controls, accountability and measurement, and an automated, systemic means to increase performance effectiveness.'

Fresh Del Monte selected Cognos' consolidation, planning, and business intelligence capabilities which are seamlessly integrated for performance management. This decision enables them to replace an existing planning solution and provide decision-makers with multi-dimensional analysis, management reporting dashboards and reporting on operational data - all in one seamless, inter-related solution.

'We are taking a proactive step in modernizing our existing system to use a solution that is 'owned by finance' and enables us to respond and support the growing needs of our diverse, global business,' said John F. Inserra, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc. 'With Cognos, we expect to be able to report on a larger range of dimensions and quickly analyze different financial scenarios. These capabilities will provide greater visibility into the assumptions and drivers used and will save time so our managers can focus on our strategic business performance.'

Cognos performance management solutions provide organizations with a single line of sight across all time horizons. Planning and consolidation combine the forward management view of the business with the current and historical view through a consistent corporate and management reporting environment. This integrated operational and financial view lets organisations proactively address business challenges for greater operational effectiveness.