Empowering Operational Planning at Guardian Energy
Key results snapshot
Budget data is now compiled in just two weeks, enabling timely analysis and 12-month investor reporting.
Revenue, budgets, forecasts, and financials are integrated into one centralized system, streamlining operations and decision-making.
Leaders across three ethanol plants now access and drill into financial data independently, reducing reliance on accounting.
With integration to PaperSaver document management software, the finance team can trace irregularities directly to source documents, improving transparency and expense control.
Who is Guardian Energy?
Guardian Energy Management, LLC is located in Prior Lake, MN, and was formed in 2011 to engage in the business of providing management and other services to Guardian Members and other ethanol production facilities. Guardian Energy Management currently manages three ethanol facilities across the Midwest.
Business challenges
Guardian Energy’s primary challenge was their lack of a formal budgeting process. Their finance department would instead give a high-level 12-month projection to their financial lenders, which lacked input from external stakeholders. When evaluating Financial Performance Management (FPM) solutions, Guardian Energy sought a holistic view of their company’s operations, automation without relying on spreadsheets, and increased confidence in the data they share with stakeholders. The finance team also wanted to increase collaboration and transparency within their operations department.
Applications deployed
Prophix One Financial Planning & Analysis
System integrations
Why Prophix®
Guardian Energy evaluated several different FPM solutions, including several enterprise vendors. After much analysis and discussion, Guardian determined that the similarities between Prophix’s user interface and Excel would be an easy transition for their employees, increasing user adoption across the organization. Guardian’s Accounting Manager also had previous experience with Prophix and was confident that they could address their concerns with minimal technical training.
Key results
Guardian Energy integrates Prophix with two systems - Intellego, a Microsoft Dynamics GP toolset designed for Biofuels & Process Manufacturing, and PaperSave. Their finance team has streamlined their business operations by integrating their revenue, budget, forecast, and financial data into a single, unified financial model.
Since implementing Prophix, Guardian Energy has transformed their approach to budgeting. Now, they assemble their budget data over a two week period, which gives their finance team the ability to analyze their data, understand trends and patterns, and compare lines of business. When asked to provide a 12-month outlook, they now have the means to provide a detailed report to their investors. With insight into budgets vs. actuals, their finance team can also better understand how their decisions impact the bottom line and reallocate funds based on this data.
With Prophix, operations leaders across Guardian’s three ethanol plants have more control over their data and better visibility into how they’re measuring up against projected spend. There is less dependability on the accounting department for information, as the operations team can easily drill into financial and budget data on their own, empowering them to pivot when necessary. Guardian Energy’s team also relies heavily on their PaperSave integration. PaperSave is a document management software that Guardian utilizes for invoice scanning and workflow approvals. With their PaperSave integration, the finance team can investigate irregularities by drilling across to the underlying transactions, which outlines purchase details (i.e. Accounts Payable approval) and includes a hyperlink to see original PDF document. This provides full visibility and internal auditability for their operations team’s expenses.
Future Plans
Guardian Energy plans to expand their metrics to include more comparisons between their ethanol plants’ operational performance, which will require further integration with Intellego.
in action
