RailAmerica, Inc., the world's largest short line and regional freight railroad operator, owns 47 short line and regional railroads, operating approximately 16,300 route miles in the United States, Canada and Australia, including track access. In North America, the Company's railroads operate in 27 states, five Canadian provinces and the Northwest Territories.
"Review of operating results, monthly forecasts and annual budgets are critical components to the financial success of RailAmerica's railroad operations. Since March 2003, RailAmerica has combined the financial reporting power of SAP R/3 with the ease of use of Z Option's Budget Loader spreadsheet software to significantly reduce the time and effort needed to process planning and forecasting data.
"Budget Loader 1.0 was first implemented to aid in the monthly forecasting process. Prior to using Budget Loader 1.0, it took the IT and Operations department between 12 and 16 hours to process the monthly forecasts from all of our railroads across North America. After the implementation of Budget Loader, this effort was reduced to less than 4 hours and end-users were able to process the data with minimal assistance from the IT department.
"With the introduction of Budget Loader 2.1 in October 2003, we were able to make significant improvements in the annual budget process. Before the implantation of Budget Loader, the budget process was only uploaded into SAP after the final figures had been approved. All budget reporting prior to the final version was done using spreadsheets. After the upgrade to Budget Loader 2.1 RailAmerica is able to fully leverage SAP reporting capabilities in order to create and review multiple draft versions of the budget. Once approved, the new budget is available to managers across North America in a matter of minutes.
"Without a doubt, Budget Loader has made a significant improvement in our forecasting and budgeting process, allowing us to take full advantage of the reporting capabilities of SAP R/3. With Budget Loader, you can stop wasting time manipulating the format of your data so you can spend more time analyzing your data."
- Pedro Carrera
- RailAmerica, Inc.