Unifying FP&A for a large veterinary services group

Our client is a fast-growing multi-national group of small animal, equine and farm veterinary practices and production animal health businesses, headquartered in the UK. It has circa 500 sites and over 6000 staff, and has expanded into France and Italy. The group also has diversified interests in veterinary schools, laboratories and pet crematoriums.

From small beginnings in 2015, our client experienced a fast-growth period which included expansion into Europe. This exponential growth gave rise to a number of challenges with financial reporting, planning and business analytics. Concentric was engaged to identify and implement a corporate performance management (CPM) solution that would streamline financial close, consolidation, budgeting, forecasting and management reporting.

The challenge

After a period of rapid expansion, our client's Finance team found themselves juggling disparate systems and processes across the group.

Financial reporting and analysis involved the use of IBM Cognos as the primary reporting solution, which had not kept pace with business change. This was complicated by a myriad of separate supporting spreadsheets that struggled to bring together feeds of information from three instances of the core financial system Microsoft Navision ERP (one per country), a number of Sage instances, other smaller G/Ls and a data warehouse which aggregated data from all the practice management systems around the group. Jet reporting cubes were utilised for analysis of Navision data, with Qlik used for non-financial KPIs. 

Our client desired to rationalise the systems landscape with a defined objective of having all Practices running on Navision, and a centralised data architecture for management information, financial reporting, budgeting and planning.  This would enable the Finance team to better support its family of UK veterinary practices.

Other key objectives included:

• Consolidation of management and statutory accounts across the group.
• Management of high volumes of acquisitions, enable seamless integration with group structure and provide a single version of the truth for consolidation, reporting and planning.
• Provide better visibility across the business, with strong audit trails for complex consolidation and improved version control for strategic planning.
• Utilise integrations and automation intelligently to improve the group consolidation and reporting processes, and enable preparation of driver-based budgets within a unified model.
• Increase the productivity of the finance function and provide a platform for innovation in process, increased collaboration and reduce reliance on Excel.

The solution

OneStream Software was selected to enable the Group to put in place the decision-support and management information solution necessary to meet its internal and external corporate planning and reporting needs.

Not only would OneStream provide a unified central platform for all group reporting, planning and analytical requirements, but as a modern CPM system it eradicated the reliance and risk associated with producing reporting and planning on legacy systems and spreadsheets.

The implementation of OneStream was carried out as a multi-phase project separated into two phases:  

• Phase 1 - Management actuals, P&L forecasting, comparative budgets, and statutory reporting.
• Phase 2 - Driver-based budgeting and planning. 

Key benefits

• Streamlined management and statutory reporting with a single version of the truth.
• Improved financial and operational data integrity and strong audit trails.
• Scalability within the platform to accommodate the growing enterprise.

The results

Migration to a modern CPM platform

• Replacement of Cognos and other fragmented elements of the reporting process with a more modern CPM platform that offers greater integration, process automation and governance.
• Provision of a robust and reliable solution with flexibility to add new entities as the business grows and diversifies.
• Implementation of a user friendly, workflow-driven experience for end users to standardise manual processes. 
• Reduction in dependencies on offline spreadsheet-based activity.

Support for core reporting processes

• Preparation of Management and Statutory consolidated accounts in a multi-currency environment. 
• Consolidation of budgets and forecasts with preparation of driver-based budgets and forecasts for scenario planning and comparatives.
• Service for local GAAP and group IFRS reporting needs.
• Preparation of proforma acquisition accounts in parallel to ongoing trading Practices and capture of pre-acquisition trading in support of forecasting and budget outlook.
• Support for Bank Covenant Reporting.

Improved process efficiency

• Creation of a foundation for future process efficiency and automation that scales to meet business growth.
• Alignment of reporting systems and processes with the current state of business structures and requirements.
• Opportunity for extension into other financial and operational reporting processes using the core platform e.g. cash forecasting, people planning, capex planning and account reconciliations.

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