Our CEO started in the textile industry, the Managing Partner was the CFO at a large global asset manager,  one partner has worked in financial services in a variety of departments, often leading multi-departmental projects. Staff working with current clients are involved in aerospace, credit cards, asset management securities transactions processing and  governmental organisations.

Axcent AG is registered with Microsoft as a provider of customised Microsoft solutions for clients. Our work with Microsoft Dynamics 365 receives full support from the Microsoft team which we can access as developers to get the best for our clients

We are a total of 17 staff including an offshore development team of 8.

Using Axis requires staff across the organisation to assess what efforts they are expending towards what client, product and work processes. This effort is then costed, compared to and within the value chain and the results are visible to many across the organisation. The mere availability and transparency of this information already empowers even the most junior staff to try to improve and get their delivery costs lower.

Axis is one of many inputs into the decision making process. What it does is provide transparency on the numbers parts and provide clear pointers to where the reasons may lie. The answer could be to review prices, address inefficiencies, monitor effect of improvements, decommission or even let it be as it may well be a relationship binder or loss leader. The key is whatever decision is taken, it is taken with “Eyes Wide Open”.

As an allocation engine, it depends on allocation methods and assumptions. Axis provides many different allocation methods that can be use with ease and can, to a very large extent, provide a solid representation of detailed client and product profitability. The CEO of a large client said – “It will never be 100% or even 95% correct. I just need it to be 80% correct as that is enough to know what actions I have to take. The other 20% will not change anything”. He further added: “When a manager wants more accuracy before taking remedial actions, I know the manager does not wish to face facts!”

Spreadsheets can work too however, for several good reasons, Axis has actually replaced spreadsheets at some client installations. Main reasons quoted are: it got so bulky, I can only manage to run annual calculations; if my staff or I make a formula mistake, it takes me ages to find and correct it; I kept losing changes whenever my PC froze; My staff turnover in that area is high as nobody wants to do manual work for too long. Senior management do not trust the results as I need to make broad assumptions to get it to work on the spreadsheet.

The idea of client and product profitability is not a novel one and most firms try to get some analytics in that context. However many fail as the allocation methods and underlying reasonings are not adequately captured or handled, mostly in spreadsheets, in adequate detail. This leads to both errors and allows managers many opportunities to poke holes in the results. With Axis, the ease of implementing many different allocation methods and criteria, combined with the user friendly use and review processes encourages managers to manage and own their data.  This in turn drives effective user acceptance of the results. That makes all the difference!

Allocations of revenues and costs in one location / country towards clients and products relevant to other countries automatically provides a detailed numerical analysis of cross border services provided. If management are placing reliance on these numbers for their day to day management of the business, it is more likely the tax authorities would also accept transfer pricing methodologies based on the same processes. Save on expensive tax consulting fees!

Axis is NOT a reporting engine. It is our Smart allocations engine that provides detaled client, product and process profitability analytics. The data output of Axis is stored in a cube which can be accassed by most modern reporting tools like Power BI, Tableau and also Excel. In some instances, we also provide a straight forward results data transfer into the already existing reporting engine used by the client. In another instance, we are actively providing meaningful reports using Power BI for the CFO to use in his updates to senior management.

Whilst it depends on the actual setup, number of locations and so on, the basic Axis software on a laptop could be installed for a one-off guide price of CHF 150,000. Our team also provides regular updates for an annual fee and our daily charges for bespoke development are some of the most competitive – mainly as Axis itself was developed together with a user community and already provides most of what a business would need.