Valtech:
Valtech is a global business transformation agency with strong expertise in technology, marketing, and experience design. Valtech helps brands to get the right story through impactful content assets and personalized campaigns that create an ideal customer journey.
Since its creation in 1993, the multiple award-winning agency has grown exponentially and now counts more than 3000 employees across 17 countries. Valtech’s fast-paced development was achieved through both business success and steady growth strategy based on numerous mergers and acquisitions (M&A). After a few M&A, it was necessary to adapt the group’s operating logic to support its rapid growth, and to reinforce the group’s consolidation processes based on Oracle Hyperion Financial Management (HFM).
In 2013, Valtech began to work with Smarthys to get an external perspective and strategic vision of their processes and utilization of HFM. The goal was to identify areas for continuous improvement that could be deployed rapidly while also getting new entities on board.
The group finance department makes sure that the correct accounting rules are respected (IFRS), prepares monthly closings and produces a quarterly financial statement. All of this requires meticulous coordination between the different contacts involved in the consolidation and reporting activities of the group.
To manage the financial operations of 47 offices world-wide, each entity has its own financial service. The Group Finance Department is shared between offices in Paris, Dallas, London and Stockholm. Managing accounting and financial reporting between the 17 countries where Valtech operates implies dealing with different accounting rules, time zones, and cultures. In 2009, Valtech started to use Oracle HFM as a core system for reporting and consolidation processes reliability.
After many acquisitions, the Valtech’s scope of consolidation had been constantly evolving and the group needed to both manage the flow of new employees and to adjust the internal and external financial operations. When Oracle HFM was implemented, Valtech was much smaller than it is today, and wanted to build strong foundations to create an enabling growth environment. However, having a consolidation solution and a highly skilled workforce was not sufficient to support the group’s growth.
Challenges of the project:
- Analyze, prioritize, and fix any dysfunction noticed during the initial diagnostic and make the system more reliable and adapted to strategic growth goals.
- Rapidly but effectively guide and train collaborators whether during mergers or during internal movements (evolution of finance team).
- Ensure the best possible transfer of knowledge as part of a continuous improvement process.
- Establish a smooth cross-country communication system with the different entities of Valtech to be able to prioritize and solve any requests.
- Secure migration from 11.1.2.2 to 11.2 in three months, while enabling the activity to stay up and running.
- Manage HFM for both external and internal reporting.
« Smarthys is a very good partner. We have worked with them for 8 years now. They already have a good knowledge of us and how our group works, but they also have a lot of experience from working with other clients which is important for us because then they can share the best practices with us. »
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Discover Oracle HFM Latest Developments From Version 11.1.2 x to 11.2
Smarthys Solution
In the early stages of the project, expertise and feedback from Smarthys consultants on the implemented Oracle HFM helped to identify areas for improvement, establish a good basis for an efficient consolidation system, and systemize the use of existing good practices.
A global continuous support contract was then put in place to allow continuity of service and help facilitate the different transitions of the group, whether a system migration or another M&A.
Valtech’s Financial Department can deliver 100% of its reporting on time thanks to processes reliability, and Smarthys expertise and support:
- Collaborative ticket management system for daily use, deployed to better monitor and prioritize problems and requests from different entities.
- Responsive support and quick help in all emergencies, to avoid any delay in reporting during the closing.
- Dedicated PMO experts to manage the migration project and coordinate the technical, functional, and financial teams.
- Advise on the do’s and don’ts of HFM, thanks to a perfect knowledge of the HFM solution.
- Regular transfer of knowledge to make sure the Valtech team is up to date on the best practices.
Today, Valtech and Smarthys are working hand in hand on constant consolidation process improvement and reliability through the optimal use of Oracle Hyperion Financial Management. More than a “client-provider” relationship, it is an open and collaborative partnership.
“Smarthys is always looking out for us to get the best solution and also long term so it’s not all about fixing things quickly it’s also about having a good sustainable solution that will work as well in the future. It is more a Partnership rather than a client & provider relationship. We always get the adequate support that we need for different types of situations.”
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