Outsourcing Provider Takes the “Man” Out of Manual Financial Reporting Processes

Challenge

Transguard operates in a dynamic and diverse business environment that requires numerous financial reports, according to Carrie Barker, head of Commercial Finance for Manpower Services at Transguard. “We often have a huge number of reports to produce around everything from mobilization to payrolls,” Barker said. “We are utilizing massive amounts of data, so keeping everything correct and properly reconciled is a big challenge.”

Although Transguard uses the powerful Oracle E-Business Suite, financial reporting from the complex ERP system was holding back the commercial finance team from performing valuable business analysis. Putting together customized―and sometimes extremely complex―financial reports took multiple manual steps, only to have static, outdated data in the end.

The need to expedite report creation combined with Transguard’s commitment to investing in its own human capital led Transguard to implement a real-time, Microsoft Excel-based reporting solution that links directly to Oracle financial data.

Solution

“Every business unit at Transguard has its own P&L report, and the Excel-based tool lets us refresh the Oracle data in them automatically, thereby enabling us to see how each unit is performing in real-time,” said Barker.

In the past, Transguard’s production of monthly performance reports took up to 15 days. The new solution has reduced this to around 10, thanks to the time savings it generates for each user throughout the reporting process.

GL Wand lets the team instantly pull data on queries for every contract, as well as note the revenue and cost associated with it. “Accessing information instantly gives us time to search for anomalies and errors, and this reporting tool is invaluable when it comes to drilling down into the data to perform the requisite analysis,” Barker described. “This drill-down functionality means we can dive as deep down into the data as is required.”