International Construction Firm Reports Immediate Results Using GL Wand

SGB International has a network of over 300 branches in 32 countries across the globe and manages a workforce of 24,000 professionals. To manage the finances of this extensive network, SGB utilizes an Oracle suite of tools—the Oracle E-Business Suite. “Oracle tools are powerful,” said Mark Paver, Regional Finance Director, “but the process to see the data we needed was slow and cumbersome.”

The company was using Oracle FSG reports, Discoverer, Microsoft Access, and Microsoft Excel to work their numbers each month, but it simply was not enough. “We had more than 100 FSG reports each month, and numerous Discoverer reports with little consistency or version control,” said Paver. Monthly analysis schedules were being manually entered from Oracle as a response to confusing outputs.

Using the system that was in place, the finance department had to post journals, run FSG, convert the data to Excel, review and validate the numbers manually, and then publish and repeat the cycle. The process simply took up to four hours from start to finish, and by the time the appropriate reports were generated, the data was already dated.

“The solution,” said Paver, “was found with insightsoftware’s product, GL Wand. The user interface was such that very little training was necessary.”

The results were both profound and immediate. “It was so straightforward. Now, when the database is accessed there is a button. Users can click it, and have access to the tool,” said Paver. The product leverages the existing Oracle solution to do something that may sound simple, but is absolutely invaluable to any company—create user-friendly reports in real time.

GL Wand provides reports with drill-down capabilities that are refreshable on demand, yet preserve formatting and Excel formulae. The reporting process is simply review, refresh, and publish. If there is a change made to the database, the report is updated instantly.

Paver can now close the month earlier than ever before. This frees the finance department to concentrate on optimizing core business operations. Paver is also looking to the future to see how the company can leverage GL Wand going forward. “The solution is just so easy to use and the reports are so easy to read and function,” Paver said. “There are no excuses now.”