Case Study: Madison Square Garden speeds financial planning and reporting with Revelwood and IBM Cognos TM1

IBM Cognos TM1 Helps Madison Square Garden Change Its Game

Madison Square Garden (MSG), a fully integrated sports, entertainment, and media company, needed a better way to manage financial budgeting, forecasting, and analysis across multiple operating divisions. With disconnected spreadsheets, disparate systems, and no centralized repository for information, the finance team spent too much time gathering and verifying data instead of focusing on business performance. Revelwood helped MSG address this challenge with IBM Cognos TM1.

Revelwood implemented IBM Cognos TM1 as a unified planning and forecasting platform, designing models for compensation, allocations, and SG&A/technical expenses. The solution gave MSG real-time visibility into revenues, labor planning, and operating costs, improved what-if analysis, and sped up monthly close processes from a five-day cycle to a much faster turnaround. It also helped MSG handle a major spin-off from Cablevision more efficiently by making it easier to gather, analyze, and report the required financial data.

Madison Square Garden

Dimitrios Misantonis

Director of Financial Systems