Drill-down Variance

What causes changes in financial performance?

Once a variance between actual and plan is identified, Finance must drill down into the details to understand what caused it. Knowing what drove changes in revenue and profit provides a more complete picture to help guide your business and improve performance.

With the Drill-down Variance decision area, you can set planning goals and scorecarding metrics for performance management elements such as:

• Profit and sales change ($ and %)
• Volume / price / mix variance ($ and %)
• Average unit cost ($)
• Discount (%)
• GL expense detail ($ and %)
• Net change, price, and sales ($)
• Units sold (#).

You can analyze these goals and metrics by a variety of dimensions to find the hidden gems in the data:

• Customer and Industry
• Fiscal month / year
• GL lines
• Division / department
• Brand and Product line.

Using the Drill-down Variance decision area

You set targets based on your goals and metrics in Drill-down Variance. You monitor your success by looking at how you measure up against your targets. Further, you dive into your results to find out more about these elements driving performance management.

• Sales change ($) : If sales increased by five percent between two time periods, was the cause greater volume, higher price, or a change in the product mix?
• Profit change (%) : If profits increased, was it due to higher cost of goods, a change in product mix to lower margin products, or a reduction in discretionary spending?

Additional Resources:

Cognos Performance Manager

Online Demo

See how plans, financial reports, and scorecards can help you manage performance across all data sources.

Finance: Trusted Advisor or Compliance Enforcer? - The Performance Manager Series

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Become the trusted advisor and compliance enforcer in your company. Download the finance chapter of the Performance Manager book.

Ventana Research - 2007 Performance Management Vendor and Product Scorecard

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Cognos ranked as a leading lendor for Performance Management in latest PM Scorecard

Consolidation Automation: Advancing Compliance and Performance Management

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Automate with the right tools, and your compliance and performance management efforts can be mutually supportive.

Driving Game-Changing Financial Performance:A Case Study with MDS Pharma

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Learn how one organization introduced performance tools and concepts that allowed it to measure financial and sales KPIs, proactively monitor business operations, and manage its business with near-real-time visibility using dashboard metrics and reports.

2008 Cognos Virtual Finance Forum

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View archived presentations from our virtual event for finance professionals. Sessions from industry experts like Bryan Hall of the Hackett Group, get first-hand accounts from leading companies who are succeeding with FPM solutions like 7-Eleven and American Express and preview our latest solutions with our product solution experts.

Forecasting in Turbulent Times

Web Seminar On-Demand

Join Tom Willman of The Hackett Group and get the tools and disciplines to transform your forecasting procedures in this CFO.com webinar. Learn best-practices in forecasting, how to overcome barriers to change and about technologies to help you sustain a renewed forecasting process.

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