"We need absolute certainty that the company we work with keeps everything up to date and accurate. This is precisely what BrightAnalytics is offering us."

The power of intuition

Open Infra empowering its growth with BrightAnalytics

Sweden-based Open Infra, specialized in deploying and operating fiber networks in Sweden, Germany, the UK and the USA, saw its steady growth being hampered by a lot of manual and time-consuming work within finance. Thanks to the highly intuitive BrightAnalytics platform, the fiber giant is powered to continue its growth with confidence in data, reports and consolidation. Deputy CFO Erik Rothman explains why. 

Open Infra, established in 2008 in the vicinity of Sweden’s capital Stockholm, is building, managing and developing fiber infrastructure for households, companies and municipalities in Sweden, Germany, the UK and the United States. The company is growing at a fast pace, and is currently the third largest player in Sweden. As often is the case with fast growing companies, the use of their finance tools follows the same growth rate. Erik Rothman, Deputy CFO: “Today, we have 25 companies in our portfolio, using four different accounting systems: Fortnox, Datev, Xero and Quickbooks. When it comes to consolidating and reporting all these different data sets, we historically worked within Excel. That implied a lot of manual work and many risks, and we cannot afford fault margins.”

Feel safe

As Open Infra hit the ceiling, it went on the lookout for a strategic partner to make the move to a sustainable and automated solution for consolidation and reporting. Rothman: “In February 2022, we got in touch with BrightAnalytics’ office in Sweden. Lucas Carette explained to us the possibilities of BrightAnalytics and one month later, we signed the deal. Soon after, all of our accounting packages were integrated in the BrightAnalytics platform.” This would have been quite some work to do, as many intercompany transactions needed to be mapped. “Luckily, most of this work was done by BrightAnalytics, and I could easily double check everything to feel safe.” Open Infra mostly uses the modules for reporting and cashflow: relatively straightforward, implying that Rothman now feels comfortable enough to also allow his colleagues from accounting to start using the system. The aim is to have accurate monthly consolidation reports.

Quintessential for Open Infra is the ‘peace of mind’ offered by BrightAnalytics. Or, as Rothman says: “We need absolute certainty that the company we work with keeps everything up to date and accurate. This is precisely what BrightAnalytics is offering us. In our consolidation work, we take a ‘zero fault’ approach.”

As the system is fully up and running, Rothman takes a first look back at it. “I see three major reasons to use BrightAnalytics’, he explains. ‘First, the platform is very intuitive. Second, it is very easy to drill down, all the way to the underlying invoices. And third, the system is perfect when it comes to mapping and consolidating intercompany transactions.”

Annual report

The next step that Open Infra will be taking with the BrightAnalytics platform is the annual reporting. “I am really looking forward to using BrightAnalytics to help us create our annual report”, Rothman states. The annual reporting is in Swedish Crowns, but as Erik explains, different currencies are easily dealt with within the management platform. 

Rothman is very pleased with BrightAnalytics, both when it comes to customer support and to the core of the system. “A friend of mine works at Fastum, a real estate company, and I told him about BrightAnalytics. Apparently, my enthusiasm must have been inspiring, because Fastum started using BrightAnalytics as well.”