Genesis Energy

Insightful Forecasting

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“WE USED TO HAVE A LOT OF IP SITTING IN PEOPLE’S HEADS. MINDFULL WAS ABLE TO EXTRACT INFORMATION FROM OUR PEOPLE AND PUT IT INTO THE SYSTEM.”

- Audrey Scheurich

WHY DID YOU CHOOSE MINDFULL?

A friend’s referral, reference checks and the presentation they made to us. Knowing Belinda had an accounting background gave us confidence that we weren’t going to get an IT view of the world.

IN ONE SENTENCE, WHAT WAS THE PROBLEM YOU BROUGHT TO US?

It was taking us a good three months to do a budget or forecast, so our idea was to put in a system that a) was a lot more robust and b) wasn’t reliant on particular individuals to get it all together.

IN 3 POINTS WHAT DID WE HELP YOU DO?

• We had over 1000 spreadsheets. Mindfull brought all that together and now we’ve eliminated over 980 of them.
• It used to take us three months to do a forecast. Now we do one every month.
• We used to have a lot of IP sitting in people’s heads. Mindfull was able to extract information from our people and put it into the system.

WERE WE MINDFULL OF THE TIMELINE?

Mindfull had people working on weekends, they had people working overnight in South Africa and getting back to us in the morning. All that sort of thing to make sure deadlines were met. To be fair, we weren’t on time in the end, but Mindfull did respond when we needed to zip it up.

"We had over 1000 spreadsheets. Mindfull brought all that together and now we've eliminated over 980 of them."

WERE WE MINDFULL OF THE CONTEXT?

Genesis Energy recently went through the IPO Process. As part of that process there was a whole lot of work done around scenario analysis – What happens if we change the price path? What happens if we change the customer numbers? We’d create a version in Cognos TM1, make a change, and basically overnight we could rerun that scenario. Rather than taking us weeks and weeks to run those scenarios, we were basically doing it over a couple of days. It was a godsend.

WHAT ARE THE RESULTS OF OUR WORK?

As well as speeding things up, our business has a better understanding of what our forecasts are built on and what our key drivers are. Now we all work with one set of assumptions. Cognos TM1 has become the one source of the truth.

WHAT DO YOU THINK BEING MINDFULL MEANS?

Being ‘mindfull’ is about being aware of what’s around you and staying focused on the present.

WHAT ARE YOU MOST MINDFULL OF IN YOUR LIFE?

I’m ‘mindfull’ of being totally focused on a person, conversation or meeting when I am in it and not letting myself be distracted by phones, other issues, what’s going on outside and that sort of thing.

New Digital Performance

I have a large watch collection, and classic watches are especially important to me. I had a silver Rolex, and I actually gave it to my little brother. He wears it every day. He's an actor, so whenever he goes to an audition, he can look down, see it, and it gives him confidence. It was a great thing to pass on.

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