EBITA Systems

A Stalled NAV 2009 Go-Live Project - With Complex Consolidation

A travel agency’s normal function is to act as an agent, selling travel products and services on behalf of a supplier. Consequently, unlike other retail business, they do not keep a stock in hand. The massmarket package holiday and some agency chains have developed a ‘holiday supermarket’ concept, in which customers choose their holiday from brochures on racks and then book it from a counter. With the help of internet, customers also choose their holiday from online brochures and then book it online.

For this wholesale vacation program firm offering a diverse property portfolio throughout the U.S., most of the properties are owned or managed by the firm itself. As the firm had to manage all the owned properties as “subsidiaries” and to manage other product/service providers as “affiliates”, the firm naturally had to set up NAV’s “Inter-company Posting” module.

Go-Live with Unhappy Customers

The company installed NAV 2009 with the help of a Microsoft Dynamics Partner. The basic modules and features worked. However, the company discovered that there had been some gaps in their preparation. The business process didn’t quite fit with the system. The Inter-company Posting and Consolidation did not work properly. The CFO had to use Excel to manually prepare “Elimination Entries” and “Consolidated Financial Statements”. The are too many compromises. The company realized that change is required. The scope creep moved in. The stalled project needs to continue. When asked about what is good about the new system, the CFO said: “The only thing we liked is that we could export data to Excel and import data back to NAV”.

Exploring the Options

The company looked at consulting firms that could work with the existing Microsoft Dynamics Partner to finish what’s left to be done, but “pinpointing the glitches and gaps as well as coming up with solutions at project closing stage was fairly challenging; in our case, it requires deep expertise in financial accounting and NAV”, says the CFO. The company and the Microsoft Dynamics Partner looked up north: EBITA Systems with deep root in finance and operations.

Identifying Gaps and Formulating Solutions

The implementation review focused on four key areas: Core Functionality Setup, Operational Workflow, Reporting and Analysis, and End User Adoption.

Superior Expertise in both System Setup and Business Processes

With deep experience in both NAV ERP system and Operational/Financial Management, EBITA Systems quickly identified the issues. System setup would heavily involve intercompany transactions and consolidation. The company has been set up as the consolidating company, with 28 “Companies” in one database, representing associated companies or subsidiaries for the group.

However, there was no business case study to ensure set-up would capture core business activities in all associated companies; entity relationship and process mapping is incomplete. Consolidation was done manually in Excel, not getting any easier. The setup did not meet workflow requirements.

EBITA Systems built an “Entity Matrix” to re-examine the business relationship between any pair of them. The “Entity Matrix” would not only facilitate verification of the integrity of setup but also ensure the framework could facilitate streamlined workflow, reporting, and analysis. Based on the “Entity Matrix”, EBITA Systems re-configured setup and bridged the gaps.

Superior Expertise in Reporting and Analysis

With experience from the business operation and financial management world, knowing what stakeholders are looking for, EBITA Systems quickly figured out why the company is concerned about reporting.

The company would require financial reporting and operational reporting/analysis from a consolidated point of view as well as from business unit point of view. Analysis Views and Account Schedules have been set up with limited scope. There are no full-scale business intelligence capabilities. Mostly out-of-box standard reports are used and they are not completely meet business requirements. Desired reporting structure had not been fully depicted yet, not to mention it was not implemented in NAV.

Instead of jumping on new and expensive report-writing tools, EBITA Systems recommended the company to focus on NAV built-in report-writing tool - C/SIDE Report Designer, and Visual Studio Report Designer. EBITA Systems showed tremendous opportunities for configuring more robust Account Schedules using Global Dimensions or Analysis Views. EBITA Systems also drafted a template for reporting package in “desired” format.

Superior Expertise in Driving User Adoption

Coming from real business world End User background, EBITA Systems understand how to do the jobs in the capacity of Accounting and Service Department and how a proven system could enhance organizational productivity. For this company, users reported that they found the system not very user-friendly. This pointed to the fact that neither workflow was very well designed in system nor documented. “Role-based” training is needed but it would only be possible with well-defined processes and workflow. EBITA Systems helped to reshape “Role-based Workflow” and empower “End Users” following redefined workflow. EBITA Systems also built automation tools and utilities to simplify routines.

“EBITA Systems has deep proven expertise with NAV ERP, has thorough understanding of business processes, and knows how to apply ERP to operations and financial processes - including less known features like Inter-company Posting and Consolidation.”
CFO, Wholesale Vacation Program