With Sureserve’s business moving in a different direction towards higher volume and a more transactional offering, their current consolidation solution was no longer fit for purpose.
About Sureserve
Sureserve is an AIM listed, leading compliance and energy services group that performs critical functions in homes, public and commercial buildings, with a focus on clients in the UK public sector and regulated markets. Their services are delivered through two divisions: Compliance and Energy Services.
The Challenges
- There was a great deal of manual intervention required during month end for areas such as cash flow
- They didn’t have 100% confidence in the accuracy of the data
- Sureserve were only able to bring in monthly figures whereas the requirement of Sureserve entities was to work on Year to Date
Enter, CCH Tagetik’s Consolidation Solution
When comparing other enterprise Financial Consolidation software solutions on the market, Sureserve was impressed with CCH Tagetik. The solution was fit for purpose, both from an automation perspective and the ability to report Year to Date rather than month by month.
Tagetik not only automates Financial Consolidation, but it’s a unified platform and that was a huge selling point for Sureserve, with the inclusion of Collaborative Office (collaboration capabilities using Microsoft Word and PowerPoint).
Jemma Redmond, Group Financial Systems Manager comments
“With the previous system we used, we had to manually input 9 reports when doing the statutory accounts which can now be done with the click of a button. This obviously saves us a significant amount of time.”
Choosing the right implementation partner
Sureserve have a long standing relationship with HAYNE and were aware of our track record of successfully delivering best-in-class Tagetik implementations. This was the reason behind selecting HAYNE as their implementation partner.
The implementation process was done during the first lockdown which meant the whole project, from scoping all the way to Go Live was done remotely. At the time, this was a new process for Sureserve. HAYNE were able to walk Sureserve through the end to end process around Project Governance leaving them confident that working remotely would not jeopardise the project being a success.
Jemma continues,
“The communication with HAYNE throughout the whole project was great with regular contact from both the Project Manager Umang, and the Lead Consultant Nimesh. There was never a time where it looked like the project timelines were not going to be achieved and the solution went live exactly as planned. This showed excellent time management on HAYNE’s behalf.
We could reach out to HAYNE at any point and set up meetings where necessary, even at very short notice. HAYNE knew exactly how our business was run and therefore understood exactly what we needed. The relationship between HAYNE and Sureserve worked really well and they met all of our expectations.”
Outcome… More Automation = More Accuracy and Less Stress
Sureserve now have a fit for purpose and automated consolidation system. Their cash flow works without the need for any form of manual intervention and CFO and Board Reporting reporting is largely automated, which saves time and reduces stress, especially around period end.
Tagetik was designed and configured to extract and load data directly from MS Dynamics NAV. Sureserve benefit heavily from the data being saved year to date as opposed to monthly which is what their previous solution was doing. This is more appropriate for the way SureServe is set up as an organisation. From an accountancy perspective, this is very helpful as it allows them to load balances thus capturing the position to date whilst having the flexibility to report periodically as required.
With their previous solution, any prior period adjustments were not picked up and reports had to be done with a separate system to ensure numbers matched.
The Consolidation System, Balance Sheet and Profit and Loss all appear with ease and work as they should. Tagetik has provided Sureserve with an integrated Financial Consolidation solution that works, something Sureserve went without for a long time.
Jemma finally comments
“At year end we have to publish 13 sets of annuals reports. This was a time consuming and manual task. Tagetik has now automated this task leading to a more timely review and less areas of error.”