[Case study] Business Intelligence: finally a bridge between finance and management?

Digital tools help CFOs to become the driving force behind value creation. But only if they can master the growing flow of data they generate...

The beauty of Business Intelligence is that it is the CFO's best asset in this process, enabling him to optimize his ability to make proposals. A new role for decision-makers?

In this article, we report on how Verdié Voyages used Business Intelligence to boost its performance.

[Issues] Financiers and executives: chasing time is not conducive to dialogue

Finance departments are constantly under pressure from decision-makers, who need indicators for day-to-day management. In two words: reliable data without delay! This is the only way for financial managers to sit at the strategists' table.

But what happens when the CFO gathers information before a decision is taken?

Initially, finance teams update their databases, while remaining captive to the constraints of the IT department (D+1, D+3, etc.). They then have to cross-reference information from various accounting and treasury software packages, or Excel spreadsheets. Finally, they have to make manual adjustments to neutralize this or that effect, because the exceptional is often the rule.

Getting reliable data at the end of the chain, and the time needed to analyze it, is quite a challenge. The result? Decisions are taken on the basis of incomplete, irrelevant or already obsolete information. And managers end up doing without this analysis...

How does Business Intelligence solve these problems? A concrete example from Verdié Voyages

Implementation of the MyReport decision-support solution at Verdié Voyages

At Verdié Voyages, the MyReport Business Intelligence tool has decompartmentalized the company.

BU directors and finance managers work hand in hand to optimize performance.

What issues do you need to resolve?

Verdié Voyages has 4 brands, 35 agencies and over 200 employees.

This configuration brings with it a number of challenges:

• Time-consuming and tedious processes,
• Too much manual processing in Excel,
• Little time for analysis and management,
• Need to equip management with a dashboard.

3 years after joining the group, the CFO wanted to overhaul certain internal processes.

Data feedback was so complex and time-consuming that it was impossible to get a global view of performance in real time. As a result, the finance teams were unable to provide steering indicators for the various BUs. The company was compartmentalized, with no synergy between finance and the business units.

What's more, the finance team was too dependent on the IT department. In addition to having to ask the IT department to make data available in line with structural changes, the finance department had to adapt to the availability of the IT department, which was itself heavily involved in its day-to-day tasks and other ongoing projects. As a result, staff had to manually rework the reports and accounting statements supporting the annual accounts in Excel.

Which solution?

Since adopting the MyReport :

Management automatically receives a snapshot of daily sales, as opposed to once a month previously. This is essential for our business.

Laurent Albouy, DAF

The tool has thus helped to establish "a cross-functional approach within the company, which breaks down organizational barriers and encourages concerted decision-making".

The benefits

A 360° view of business performance

By centralizing data in a data warehouse and making it usable and accessible, MyReport gives the CFO a 360° view of the performance of each business unit.

Empowered employees

Thanks to MyReport, data is accessible and usable. Employees no longer need to make requests to the IT department. Business units have a high degree of autonomy in drawing up their reports.

Accessing data is now easy: we can access all the company's figures quickly and easily.

Laurent Albouy, DAF

Optimizing financial analyses

In the words of Laurent Albouy:

"We operate in a high-volume ecosystem in terms of accounting flows. For example, MyReport has enabled us to save around 15 working days in justifying the accounts receivable of our travel agency network.days to justify the accounts receivable of our travel agency network, because data updates between our business products and our CEGID accounting system are now almost instantaneous.

Management now automatically receives a snapshot of daily sales, as opposed to once a month previously. This is essential for our business, as we need to analyze our network's sales activity on a daily basis, comparing it with the cumulative figure (YTD)".

In conclusion, BI makes it possible for financial and operational decision-makers to work together

Thanks to BI, new processes are being created that enable informed decisions to be made more fluidly.

In practice, the CFO and his teams can work on a solution that collects data from different sources, making it reliable and structuring it. There's no longer any need to manually update three tables, or to check links to ensure the reliability of reporting. No need to create a dashboard from scratch either.

With this steering tool, the CFO is able to shed major operational light on the company's activity. He can calmly present his analysis and propose action levers to his managers. The result is a relationship based on trust and a genuine dialogue between equals.

A new relationship that benefits both parties, so why deprive yourself?