JDE drives centralised financial control in 14 countries

JDE wanted to focus more effort on business partnering so one of their key objectives was to make reporting and accounting easier and more automated, and at the same time standardise and harmonise financial systems across their manufacturing locations.

This would involve the creation of a new simplified cost model which would be transparent, reliable and flexible enough to move the organisation forward. It included the reduction in the number of cost centers which would result in less complexity, in order to achieve an efficient and effective plant production analysis and reporting and to implement clear and simplified month-end closing processes.

Up until the previous year JDE had been using Excel as a manual reporting tool but were struggling to analyse their data to a deeper level or be able to make effective data comparisons by plant. As a result, a lot of time was being spent just on reporting.

• Automation of data: More time could be spent on analysing data, rather from extracting numbers by individual plants
• Simplification and transparency of centralizing systems: The number of cost centers was reduced by 70% as most of the analysis could be done centrally.
• Harmonization with same financial structure: with all plants using the same financial structure they could support each other during a closing, or any issue.
• Improved local and central insights: data could easily be obtained from each plant and analyzed in all kinds of key organizational views.
• Alignment of transaction, BI and corporate reporting systems
• Ability to integrate actual and planned data Improved financial control at central level
• Enablement of continuous improvement: JDE could use bench marking and compare plants in a detailed way.
• Enablement of common finance and control procedures
• Significant increase of time available for analysis and business partnering.