Cartesis

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

Cartesis was a software company founded in 1990 and headquartered in Paris , France, providing business performance management (BPM) and financial management solutions . The company and the name Cartesis disappeared with the takeover by SAP .

The company was present in Germany from 1998 to 2007 with a branch in Frankfurt am Main . Its solutions were based on an integrated data model for planning / forecasting, consolidation / reporting and compliance as well as reporting / analysis. Competitors are Oracle with Hyperion , Cognos from IBM , and Microsoft .

The performance management platform "Cartesis 10" combined financial management, planning and analysis functions on the basis of a uniform data model and also integrated external financial and economic data from EDGAR Online . The complete suite consisted of the following solutions:

  • Cartesis Finance, multi-dimensional database (maximum 42 dimensions possible) for consolidation, planning, budgeting and comprehensive reporting (former name: ES Magnitude; current name: SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation 10.0)
  • Cartesis Planning, application for business planning and forecast
  • Cartesis Analyzer, multidimensional OLAP application for reporting and analysis (former name: ES Information Delivery; current name: SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation Cube Designer 10.0, today a fully integrated part of SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation 10.0)
  • Cartesis Insighter, solution to the participation management ; sold to zetVisions AG
  • Cartesis Intercompany Server, application for group-wide intercompany reconciliations at invoice level, today's name: SAP BusinessObjects InterCompany 10. Today it is a fully integrated module of SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation.

The great advantages of the software lie in the completely programming-free surface as well as the absolute scalability. This means that very complex consolidations can be implemented, as a maximum of 42 (reusable) dimensions are available. The consolidation is based on a relational database and is therefore extremely fast (normal case: a few minutes).

history

The company's roots go back to 1985 when Vivendi hired an internal group to develop a reporting and consolidation system for the company's 4,000 reporting units around the world. By the late 1980s, the resulting internal system was already attracting a lot of interest from some of Europe's largest companies.

In 1990 the company was spun off from Vivendi Corporation. In the years that followed, Cartesis introduced its first software product called Unification, which combined financial and management reporting in one system. Cartesis triggered a wave of "unification" in large French companies and established itself as a pioneer of uniform financial management.

  • 1990 Foundation of Cartesis
  • 1991 Unification launched
  • 1995 Cartesis Carat is launched
  • 1996 Start of international expansion
  • 1997 market leader in France
  • 1998 Establishment of branches in the USA and Germany
  • 1999 PricewaterhouseCoopers takes over Cartesis
  • 2000 Cartesis ES Magnitude is launched
  • 2002 Cartesis ICS and Cartesis Insighter are launched
  • 2002 Merger with the "CLIME" division of PwC Consulting, marketed as Cartesis Clime
  • 2002 Establishment of branches in Great Britain and Japan
  • 2003 Consortium led by Apax Partners signs agreement to acquire Cartesis
  • 2004 First worldwide User Conference Connect
  • 2005 acquisition of INEA Corporation
  • 2006 cooperation with EDGAR Online
  • 2007 Business Objects takes over Cartesis
  • 2007 Frankfurt branch is closed
  • 2007 SAP takes over Business Objects
  • 2011 New suite available: SAP EPM 10.0

Reasons for the company's decline

Although the company was extremely successful with its software and especially its services and was very popular with its customers, customer loyalty was over 98 percent, PricewaterhouseCoopers sold Cartesis in 2004 to the financial investor Apax Partners. Since the new management only pursued the goal of the highest possible resale, many employees, especially long-term employees, left the company.

After only about two years, Apax Partners resold Cartesis to the company Business Objects the product Magnitude, IC Server and Extended Analytics, Apax is silent about the selling price. Experts assume that Apax was able to achieve three to five times the purchase price with Cartesis. Since the middle of 2008 there are again German versions with version 10.5.1, which were discontinued by the financial investor in 2006. The investment management system Insighter was sold to zetVisions AG . With the takeover of Business Objects, SAP also buys Cartesis Finance (Magnitude).

The Magnitude software is currently (2015) sold by SAP under the name SAP Financial Consolidation and is referred to as a strategic product for financial consolidation. A version has been added that runs on SAP HANA. The Excel ADD-In (EPM Client) has been standardized with the SAP BPC product. The software has also established itself in Germany through the purchase of SAP.

Current versions of the software have direct connection options to various SAP software products through SAP BusinessObjects Financial Information Management. The software is available in 18 languages.