"It's a flexible tool that you can customise and that connects with different packages."

Growth and financial insights go hand in hand

Twenty-one acquisitions in two and a half years: creative digital agency Happy Horizon – voted the best e-commerce agency in the Netherlands – did that. And they want to keep growing. How do they ensure financial insights and an overview while acquisitions also involve different accounting packages? CFO Ernst Wiemans explains. 

“In the past two-and-a-half years, we have made 21 acquisitions,” Ernst begins. “Each of those companies worked with its own accounting package, so we needed a tool that could bring together all financial data from different data sources or types of administrations. In order to quickly understand the figures and results of all our acquisitions, this was vital. Until then, we relied on Excel for this.”

Flexible and customisable

Happy Horizon explored the market, and decided that BrightAnalytics was the best tool for their organisation. “It’s a flexible system that you can customise, and it can also connect with different packages. In addition, every interaction with the sales departement was very pleasant. Moreover, we noticed that we could also do quite a few other things with the platform, such as generating dashboards and insights, making cashflow analyses… The many possibilities to further develop the platform really appealed to us.”

And so it happened. Since choosing BrightAnalytics, Happy Horizon has already discovered many of the platform’s functionalities. “Initially, we used the software as a consolidation tool for annual accounts,” Ernst continues. “Because the need was very high then. Since the summer of 2022, we also use it as a central information tool to arrive at a single general ledger chart of accounts. In addition, we have created reports with the tool that give us insights and that allow us to compare figures with, for example, the budget, with the same period last year… Right now, we are also setting up the dashboarding exactly how we want it to be.”

Managing cashflow on a weekly basis

Being able to track their most important KPIs with one dashboard, despite working with several accounting packages in the organisation, is something they consider a huge asset. “In addition, I am happy to have central, consolidated insights into the results on a daily basis. We still do a lot of acquisitions. The fact that we can easily plug those in is an added value for us. After an acquisition, we usually take control of that company’s bank accounts the next day, and then BrightAnalytics can get to work on the integration.”

Furthermore, Happy Horizon also uses BrightAnalytics for debtor management. “Because we work with different systems within our company, we didn’t have a total overview of all outstanding debtors. But thanks to BrightAnalytics’ agings module we now have this and it helps us enormously. Today, I can create a top 20 of outstanding debtors across all companies in the group, and take action based on this information. We are also working on cash forecasting. In the future, we want to be able to manage our cashflow on a weekly basis. The tool allows us to use historical data and future budgets to better estimate our cashflow and needs.”

Working capital analysis

Happy Horizon has also added a number of non-financial KPIs to the system, including FTEs in the company. As Ernst himself is an expert user, just like four other colleagues in the company, he can do a lot himself. “That gives us a lot of flexibility,” he says. “That way, we are not dependent on BrightAnalytics. I received a short training, and after that I started discovering the platform myself. That takes some time, because quite a lot can be done with this software. Gradually, we discover new things, generate new insights and build additional dashboards. One example is our working capital analysis, which we have now integrated into a dashboard. As a result, we better understand the development of working capital over the past period and we can use that information to take action and to optimise it.”

The good cooperation with the support desk, among other things, is the icing on the cake for Happy Horizon. “After the pleasant contact with the sales department, the quick response time of the customer success team is another plus,” he concludes.