These days everything is about automating processes and simplifying our lives with the help of technology. Manual work is replaced by automations, and human skills and resources are being used for more than the monotonous tasks. This is how we evolve, from one phase to the other.
In business intelligence evolution is not linear. Automating reports and outputs, visualising data in an automated way is more than merely replacing manual processes by automated ones. It is reinventing the processes, to reduce or eliminate the risk of manual errors. It is finding other, smarter ways to get to the same results. It is not stopping at achieving the same results, but going even further – expecting more transparency, creating better processes, saving more time, getting more effective with every change we implement.
In our work with our client, we looked at their existing manual processes, we observed and analysed the ways of working they used to have and figured out a way how to automate their reporting systems to serve them. We helped data to help them achieve more.
Our client looks back on decades of successful track record of developing IT administrative services, specifically in the healthcare industry. Its organisational setup, due to the complexity of the various interconnected companies and business entities of the group was making the high-level reporting time-consuming and clumsy. The different needs, the differently implemented reporting systems, the lack of real-time aggregation of the available data caused unnecessary extra work for the top management when it came to displaying and interpreting group-level financial data.

What we achieved

The ultimate purpose of the project was to create transparency among the different business entities’ reporting and financial systems of our client so that we can replace the time-consuming and at times differently interpreted data sets coming from various legacy systems and reporting concepts.

Challenges

The biggest challenge of the project was to make sure that we create a solution that saves time for the management without creating extra work for the employees. As our client operates as a holding, the diversity and complexity of the different entities also leave their mark on the reporting. By default, the entities of the group operate separately with their own management, own ERP and reporting – but at times they provide services in a joint way, and they share resources as well.
The cross-company internal reporting was time-consuming and inefficient, done in a manual way, leaving a lot of room for human errors and misinterpretation. It used to take valuable time away from the management, and the results were lacking precision, transparency, and clarity. Each data source – coming from a different entity – had their own logic and clarity, but the aggregated data couldn’t show the required consolidated results. As the data sets were prepared for the regular monthly overviews, there was no way of checking consolidated data at any other point of the month – thus the management had to always rely on single snapshots instead of near real-time or comparable data sets. Due to the lack of data actualisation the perspective of historical data, comparison of different periods and viewing trends were not part of the reporting and planning process.

Implementation

In the project we used Microsoft Power BI and Power Query, from data coming from the entities’ own ERPs and backend SQL servers – with similar structure but different source.
During the process we first observed and analysed how the current reporting structure is done – to pinpoint the weak links and the possible sources of failure. Within this period of consultancy, we recognized what parts need to be automated and where the manual inputs need to be challenged to deliver the right results. Eliminating the human errors and recreating an algorithm that serves the management needs was our goal – that we managed to do in several rounds of iteration.
As a result of the implementation, we load the data sets directly from the individual ERPs’ SQL server directly into the POWER BI platform. We concatenated the different transactional data coming from the individual ERP systems and consolidated the base data elements to create a unified data model for all entities and all reports. According to the required accounting practices we enriched the invoicing item lines with the billing information. The invoicing information used to be created by a variety of complex rules and calculations. When displaying the data, we created a space for the overview of periodic accounting, but we also delivered reporting views with raw data and data altered with corrections.

Result

The monthly reporting is now done in a transparent and easy to handle way. By this, the members of the management spend significantly less time with the preparation of the reports and with controlling and approving them. The reporting became more precise and efficient, allowing all actions and trends to be observed without distortions, free from various interpretations – even in the case of more business entities being involved. Moreover, as it is usual with BI projects, we managed to create several side-effects to facilitate the overall handling of the business and created a development idea pipeline for further reporting projects.

Reconciling costs and revenue of shared resources

Data, in theory, is like Mathematics. It’s pure, unbiased, unquestionable, non-negotiable, and simple. It’s neutral. But in practice, data is what you use it for and how you use it. The complexity, the diversity, the structure, and usability of it depends on its sources, its users, and the output formats that you choose. Working together with our client, we saw how different needs, different professional experiences and expectations, different views and different datasets from various sources can increase the complexity and make reporting challenging. Our client’s various business units, in different countries, with managers coming from completely different backgrounds used their data in distinctive ways – serving their specific needs. In business, just as in life, the challenge is usually to simplify things as much as possible, to synchronize processes, to avoid clutter, and reduce superfluous activities to reach maximum efficiency. Our client has offices in various countries, including Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and Hungary, and works across three different business units – at different stages of their lifecycle. Their reporting was already well-advanced, with clear expectations and reports that serve business planning and forecasting: to find the harmonized view of the various data sources. Having a sales-oriented mindset, the focus was on revenue and pipeline data, with a lower priority on costs.

What we achieved

With our project the aim was to create a consolidated profit and loss report that delivers a near-real-time solution for all business units, all countries with different legal and taxation needs – serving the reporting needs of the CEO, the management, and the mid-management equally.

Challenges

Our biggest challenge was to find the right way of consolidating the data that can serve all the different professional needs (different countries, different legal entities, different business units with different business goals) and cater to the familiarity of previous experiences. The expected reporting solution had to serve multiple purposes. First, it had to serve all the potential different levels, from the CEO to management, going various levels down to the business units. This meant to provide the option to show the bigger picture view to display trends, while also offering the possibility to drill down to specific granularities. Beyond the business planning, the reporting structure had to support the work of controlling, the CFO, and the COO – and to serve as the base for the quarterly performance review of the management and the teams. Secondly, we had to create a structure that can show the changes in past, and that can help forecast the future (typically until the end of actual fiscal year); that also allows to compare achieved and forecasted performance to business plan (created before every fiscal year). For comparability and more precise planning, we needed to facilitate highlighting changes and deviations between different reporting periods. And lastly, our client being an already established company, the report structure, and the report categories within had to be aligned to the company’s established standard of P&L report, with given categories via a complex rule set. We have worked with various data sources, 3 instances of ERP, CRM and HRMS systems, the data from accounting and payroll systems of 5 legal entities in different countries around Europe, and the offline dataset of detailed yearly business planning.

Implementation

In the project we used the following technologies:

• Microsoft Power BI
• Microsoft Power Automate
• Microsoft SQL Server
• Data connections: SQL Server, Firebird, REST API, Excel, SharePoint lists

What we implemented, as the result of the project, was a customized, filterable aggregated report-system with deep drill down functions for measuring, forecasting, and comparing with the business plan for the following categories:

• direct business units’ revenue (software/service),
• revenue related cost (software/service),
• staff costs (delivery, sales management and for corporate positions),
• indirect cost
  • cost of administration and finance,
  • cost of operating HR,
  • cost of infrastructure and IT,
  • cost of management,
  • cost of marketing,
  • depreciation and amortization,
  • taxes and
• profitability on different levels: direct margin on business units, EBIDTA, EBIT, profit after tax.

All items contain (1) actual data, from invoices and other accounting items, (2) forecast from orders (agreed delivery in contracts), and (3) forecast from sales pipeline weighted with probability. The trends are displayed over periods. All report pages can be filtered by period (month/quarter/year), business unit and lower units and by different categories. Beyond this, all specific pages can be filtered by projects, customers, vendors, products, and services type. As a unique feature, reports can be compared in detail with previous versions. The changes are highlighted week-by-week, so the group management and the business management can see the items responsible for the change in revenue and/or cost. Data updates are made in an identical structure staging environment where the controlling team and the CFO review and approve changes before publishing them to the management.

Result

As a result of the implementation, our client now has a continuously updated report for overall financial performance, as well as for detailed metrics. The current reporting system is accepted as single source of truth within the company’s leadership and used for the regular management review to set and measure individual and overall business goals. This project proved how data can serve as the go-to-solution in multiple areas of a given company, even if the diversity creates a complexity that seems impossible to handle. Promeritum PandL Report CaseStudy (PDF)