Jaguar Mining Strikes Gold with Adaptive Planning Software

Fast-Growing Gold Producer Replaces Excel Spreadsheets, Enabling It To Quickly Consolidate Worldwide Financial Statements and Manage Planning Processes
 

Mountain View, CA—November 2, 2006—Adaptive Planning, the leader in collaborative business performance management (BPM) solutions, today announced Jaguar Mining, an international gold producer, has selected Adaptive Planning for streamlining its financial management processes.
Not surprisingly, the world of business data and the world of precious metals mining have much in common with each other—both need to quickly and efficiently extract high-value content from their surroundings at the lowest possible cost. Jaguar Mining shines in both domains.

Headquartered in Concord, New Hampshire but with principal operations in Minas Gerais, Brazil, Jaguar Mining Inc. is a 500-person, three-year-old public, Canadian mining and exploration company well on its way to becoming a strong, mid-sized producer in the worldwide gold market. Through its current mining operations and with three others now nearing completion or in development, Jaguar expects to produce gold at a rate exceeding 200,000 ounces per year by 2008.

For a young company, Jaguar has relatively complex financial processes. Because of differences in language and function, Jaguar uses separate general ledger systems to manage its headquarters accounting and its Brazilian operations. In addition, Jaguar's external reporting needs to comply with Canadian GAAP requirements, adding another layer of complexity. Jaguar initially developed an Excel model to handle its international consolidations, as well as manage their budgeting and forecasting processes; however, they quickly found a spreadsheet-based approach to be unwieldy.

"Jaguar's Corporate Model comprised three separate Excel workbooks and over 100 linked sheets," said Bob Katz, President of Financial Analysis and Control Technology Services (F.A.C.T.S) LLC, Jaguar's BPM partner. "The workbooks represented its major business entities, with the worksheets containing both financial and operational data for the various functions of each mine and plant."

Katz explained that the Excel-based approach was not sufficiently structured to support the consolidation process required for the company's external financial statements. "Each month, accounting staff in Concord and Brazil would export information from the GL systems into the model, and would then need to manage changes to ledger accounts and reports, consolidating adjustment entries, and last-minute audit adjustments. The Excel model couldn't easily support these processes, much less Jaguar's budgeting, forecasting, and strategic planning."

Katz knew that Jaguar had to transition to a comprehensive, yet easy-to-use BPM solution. He also recognized that the solution would need to be deployed quickly, must provide real-time support for international users and multiple currencies, and could not require incremental resources—especially IT personnel—to manage. After a comprehensive evaluation process, Jaguar chose Adaptive Planning's Web-based budgeting, forecasting, reporting and analytics solution.

Adaptive Planning, available in both on-demand and on-premises versions, is ideal for fast-growing midsized companies and divisions of large corporations. Designed specifically for non-technical business managers, the solution combines the power of advanced business intelligence (BI) software with the ease-of-use of spreadsheets.
With Adaptive Planning, Jaguar has been able to achieve newfound agility in their financial management practices. Financial consolidations, budgeting, and forecasting processes have been streamlined, becoming faster, more reliable, and better integrated. For example, not only is the accounting team able to quickly make adjustment entries to the closing financial statements, a process that would have been nearly impossible to do using spreadsheets, they have significantly reduced the time spent manually compiling budgets submitted by various departments. In addition, they have been able to introduce a systematic forecast process, integrated to their financial close processes, all because of Adaptive Planning's modeling environment.

The solution has also transformed Jaguar's analytic capabilities. "In Adaptive Planning, the centralized database provides much greater flexibility for analyzing the data," Katz notes. "For example, as actual performance and what-if scenarios are analyzed, senior management can now look at various slices of the database associated with each individual function, across mines, plants, and headquarters. And, within each function, they have a clear understanding of capital, production, cost, debt, and other key metrics. Jaguar gets a much more comprehensive, but easier to understand, view of its business."

Adaptive Planning also enhances Jaguar's ability to collaborate across country borders. "The fact that everyone in multiple geographical locations is looking at the same information at the same time is extremely valuable," Katz said. "Everyone is literally on the same page, versus before when everybody had their own individual Excel workbooks and we had to figure out who had the right information."

Katz observed that there are few software applications that satisfy the performance management needs and cost of ownership concerns of a fast-growing, midsized company. "Looking for an option between spreadsheets and those large scale BPM and BI systems was really the only alternative," he stated. "Jaguar was in that in-between area, that mid-tier level, searching for something that could manage the consolidations and also provide an integrated platform for international budgeting, forecasting, and reporting—and that could be deployed quickly and at reasonable cost. Adaptive Planning was, and is, the best solution."

About Jaguar Mining
Jaguar Mining Inc. is a gold producer operating in a prolific greenstone belt in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. The company is developing its 72,000 acre portfolio of operating and exploration properties with the objective of becoming a mid-sized gold producer by the end of 2008. Jaguar is focused on mining operations at the Sabará property, construction of the Turmalina mine and plant, and feasibility studies at the Santa Bárbara, Paciência and Roça Grande properties. Jaguar's active expansion and exploration plans are managed by one of the most experienced operating teams in Brazil. They can be reached at (603) 224-4800 or www.jaguarmining.com.

About Financial Analysis and Control Technology Services (F.A.C.T.S) LLC
F.A.C.T.S. is a financial and operational decision support services company helping small and mid-size firms achieve their business goals and maximize return on investment. They are headquartered in Concord, MA and can be reached at (508) 353-3571 or www.factservices.com.

About Adaptive Planning
Adaptive Planning is the leading provider of collaborative performance management solutions. Adaptive Planning makes it easy for midsize companies and departments of larger corporations to improve performance by moving beyond spreadsheets to automate budgeting, forecasting, reporting and analysis. Adaptive Planning provides extraordinary flexibility and value, with on-demand and on-premises solutions, open source and commercial licensing terms, and pricing –including a free version of the product – that deliver a total cost of ownership that is a fraction of the cost of traditional BPM and business intelligence software. Adaptive Planning is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif. and can be reached at 650-528-7500 or www.adaptiveplanning.com.