Automating A Manual Process to Create More Timely and Reliable Reports
Customer Company Size
Large Corporate
Region
- America
Country
- United States
Product
- Vena
- Microsoft Excel
- Ellips
Tech Stack
- Excel Templates
- Central Data Repository
- Audit Trail
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Productivity Improvements
- Cost Savings
- Customer Satisfaction
Technology Category
- Functional Applications - Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP)
- Analytics & Modeling - Predictive Analytics
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration
Applicable Industries
- Mining
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
- Quality Assurance
Use Cases
- Predictive Quality Analytics
- Process Control & Optimization
- Remote Asset Management
Services
- System Integration
- Software Design & Engineering Services
About The Customer
The customer is a leading mining corporation that was manually reconciling and reporting their sales in Excel. The company operates in a highly dynamic environment where many factors affect the recognizable revenue of their products before they reach the customer. The Finance team had to make several manual adjustments to their spreadsheets on a monthly basis before manually exporting the figures to their General Ledger (GL). This process was not only time-consuming but also prone to errors, leading to inefficiencies and potential inaccuracies in financial reporting. The company sought a solution to automate these processes, improve data accuracy, and enhance overall productivity.
The Challenge
Many factors affect the price of the client’s product before it reaches the customers, meaning several changes to the recognizable revenue had to be made in real time on a monthly basis. A single, uncontrolled Excel workbook contained all the client’s data; any user could access the spreadsheets and make unauthorized changes and there was no way to recover the data if the workbook was lost or damaged. A single month could contain several accounting entries, resulting in the need for the Finance team to perform multiple VLOOKUPs. The Finance team had to manually determine what figures had changed from one version to the next, which increased the risk that details would go unnoticed and took time away from more value-added work.
The Solution
Vena’s secure, central data repository seamlessly syncs with Ellips, automatically rolling in the client’s most up-to-date revenue and shipment data. Dynamic Excel templates and spreadsheets are connected to the central data repository; changes to the data contained in the repository automatically proliferate throughout the company. Spreadsheets dynamically determine the net effect of each month’s recognizable revenue, eliminating the need for VLOOKUPs. Detailed audit trail date-, time- and user-stamps every change made to a spreadsheet. Vena eliminated the need for manual work with a secure data repository that centrally stores the client’s data and protects data integrity. Also, Vena’s audit trail prevents unauthorized changes to spreadsheets and enables the Finance team to determine what changed from one accounting template version to the next. Vena’s dynamic templates also automatically calculate the net effect of a total month’s recognized revenue for accurate and timely reporting.
Operational Impact
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