"BrightAnalytics' solution looked so good that the decision to work together was made almost immediately."

Reporting from various dimensions: it doesn’t have to be difficult

Switching to a new system or a more efficient tool: it doesn’t always have to require a huge amount of time and energy. This is what Maria Nilsson, CFO of S-Group Solutions, discovered when she decided to rely on BrightAnalytics for the company’s financial reporting. Since then, the company has real-time insight into all figures. A breath of fresh air.

When BrightAnalytics first contacted Maria Nilsson, CFO of S-Group Solutions, the company had just been acquired by a new owner and was in the midst of transitioning to a new ERP system. “The transition to the new system took a lot of time. There was no room to work on reporting at the same time,” Maria says. “I asked BrightAnalytics to get back to me in autumn. And they did. At the perfect time: the need for a new, more efficient way of reporting was greater than ever.”

Decided almost immediately

Until then, they had always exported data from the ERP system to Excel at S-Group Solutions, in order to start editing the data manually. That was labour- and time-intensive, and Maria could only report the figures once a month. Real-time insight was lacking. “When BrightAnalytics presented their solution to us, I was immediately convinced. The acquisition and change of the ERP system had taken a lot of time and energy. BrightAnalytics’ plug-and-play solution looked so good that the decision to work together was made almost immediately. I did talk to a sister company that had a similar solution, but it could only link with one specific ERP system. After I consulted with our auditor and compared prices, we chose BrightAnalytics.” 

Maria particularly noticed that the figures could be viewed from different angles and dimensions in the BrightAnalytics-platform: for the whole company, by type of turnover, by department or customer… “We work a little differently than other companies: we don’t look at turnover by customer, but by turnover type. Think, for example, of turnover for licences (with different types underneath), for maintenance, for consultancy. It took some effort to set this up in our new ERP system, but at BrightAnalytics it was easy to do. Besides, there is the fact that there is an update every evening, that you can perform manual updates and thus always have real-time figures,” she continues.

A day gained every month

Today, Maria uses the financial reporting module in particular, including to report monthly results and monthly closings. “It’s great that this can now be done so easily. I think we gain at least one full day of time every month. Moreover, our CEO can look at the figures himself, so he is not dependent on me for this.” The managers of the consultants and sales department also have direct access. “Because it works so intuitively, people don’t need much explanation. They are quickly up and running with it. Sometimes even too quickly,” Maria laughs, “then questions come up because I still need to make certain adjustments to the figures. But it does indicate that they like using the ability to look things up themselves.”

Whether it was easy to connect with S-Group Solutions’ ERP system? She shakes her head. “However, that was not because of BrightAnalytics. The great thing is that they solved it. I didn’t have to do anything. At BrightAnalytics, they see the problem and solve it. I think that’s amazing. Their service is also fantastic. They reply quickly, and are always willing to help. I’m impressed.”

Next step: operational reporting

After just six months of working with BrightAnalytics, Maria is so enthusiastic that she took the initiative to also talk about the possibilities of the operational module. “With this, we want to be able to manage and monitor our sales department better. For example, think of the figures per consultant, etc. And maybe we can also connect with our CRM systems to gain insights into projects in the pipeline. That way, we can predict our annual turnover more easily. I am looking forward to discovering the additional possibilities of the software.”