On course towards an ambitious future with BrightAnalytics as our compass
Gita first travelled to India – the country of her roots - to do volunteer work at the age of 30. There she discovered the now famous chai latte: a black tea with herbs and milk. She liked it so much that when she got home she decided to make a business plan and she founded Chalo together with her partner. At the time he was already running Beanworks Seeds and Grains, a trading company in organic cereals, seeds and legumes that was more than ready for further growth and professionalisation. Five years onwards, both companies realise a consolidated turnover of around 18 million euros and are in need of frequent professional financial and operational reporting.
With their brand Chalo, Gita Van den Boer and her partner Peter Goethals inspire people to eat differently by using funky products and ingredients from other climates and cultures. Chalo’s sister trading company Beanworks Seeds & Grains buys pulses, grains, seeds and superfoods in bulk all over the world for the European food industry.
“Ever since Peter and I founded our companies, it was our dream to have access to frequent reporting,” Gita starts enthusiastically. “With the right figures, we could guide the company towards further growth.” However, as long as they didn't have an accountant of their own, they had to rely on an external accountant. “That had its drawbacks: we were dependent on the accountant, and the figures we received were always static. We wanted more. We have great ambitions, so we have to be able to set a budget and continuously monitor the figures in order to steer our business in the right direction.”
Available, reachable and reliable
Gita and Peter initially worked with Emasphere, but BrightAnalytics was their final choice. “Right from our first meeting with BrightAnalytics, everything went very smoothly. Our commercial contact was very good at managing our expectations. He told us what the options were and how long each step would take, and he delivered on his promises. I know how exceptional that is in IT: after the initial interview you are often disappointed because you end up with different people who have not been properly informed of the functional analysis. This often creates communication gaps.”
“BrightAnalytics was very different,” Gita says. “The company is driven by people. These people are available and reachable and they communicate about what they are doing. That's what makes all the difference nowadays. It instils confidence and peace of mind. We now know that if we ever experience any issues, we will solve them.” Another advantage is that the implementation also went very smoothly: “We adopted the structure of our P&L and implemented our mapping on top of that.”
Workable and accessible
Gita always has BrightAnalytics open now wherever she goes. “The system is always up to date without any manual interventions from us. I get a daily provisional status report on all the data that matters to us for each company. The tool also makes it easy to detect any accounting errors. As far as our budgeting is concerned, we can run simulations and try out and test different scenarios. This makes the budgeting process more workable and accessible.”
Chalo’s next step is to use BrightAnalytics for its operational reporting as well. “We are going to organise our CRM in such a way that BrightAnalytics can automatically generate our KPIs in a clear, professional, flexible and consistent way for our two companies, even though the financial structures and management mechanisms are fundamentally different.”
Continuous measurement, monitoring and adjustment
Gita also uses BrightAnalytics to manage the company's accounting department. Several employees with financial or administrative roles have their own authorisations with or without restricted access, so that they can check the financial or administrative data they need. “In the past, we were unable to keep an eye on those things. We were on a ship, we were sailing it, but we couldn’t see anything,” Gita adds. “Now we can steer things in the right direction. We can continuously measure, monitor and adjust our business objectives. That has literally brought us to where we are today. The fact that this is possible gives me peace of mind.”
- Excellent service and expectation management
- Available and reachable team
- Smooth implementation
- Easy budgeting
- No manual interventions required
- Consistent reporting across multiple companies
- Insight into key figures and KPIs at any time
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