Helping Benchmark Holdings prepare for growth

Founded in 2000, Benchmark Holdings has been built through organic innovation and strategic acquisitions. The company’s mission is to enable aquaculture producers to improve their sustainability and profitability by delivering mission critical products and solutions that improve farming efficiency and animal health and welfare for aquaculture producers. 

Benchmark Holdings’ rapid expansion meant it had outgrown its existing financial consolidation systems. The group operates a number of ERP and transactional systems which further increased complexity. As a result, consolidating and manipulating data to meet the information needs of Benchmark’s various stakeholders had often become a manual and time-consuming exercise. They were in need of a solution to streamline financial and management reporting.

The challenge

Significant acquisition activity and organic growth meant the reporting structure has not been able to keep pace. This was having an impact on the small group finance team, which had limited integration with individual business units. A clear, auditable workflow-driven process which assigned responsibility for data submissions to the right people was required.

With the increased reporting demands, the group needed to improve external reporting, better insight into the drivers of performance and an understanding of the impact of FX. This was proving difficult with existing systems and processes.

Many of the processes were manual and the team was grappling with multiple ERP and GL systems. A large dependency on Excel spreadsheets for consolidation and lack of process visibility throughout the whole close process meant a more streamlined approach was needed to improve data quality and speed of reporting.

The solution

A formal software selection process began in February 2016 and resulted in OneStream being identified as Benchmark’s preferred solution to support its current and future reporting needs.

As a OneStream Platinum Partner Concentric Solutions was instructed to help with a multi-phased approach to implementing the solution, with the initial focus being on group consolidation. Budgeting and forecasting were to follow in a future phase.

The primary objectives of the OneStream project were to:

• Remove reliance on spreadsheets for group consolidation and reporting.
• Improve the accuracy of reporting and increase the speed of consolidation.
• Support the production of the group's consolidated management and statutory accounts.
• Support efficient intercompany matching and elimination.
• Provide process visibility and audit.
• Support insight into foreign exchange variances include the ability to report actuals on a constant currency basis.
• Allow for efficient processing of acquisitions.
• Support reporting of actuals against budgets and forecasts.
• Support auditable journals for IFRS restatements and other adjustments required on consolidation.
• Provide standard reporting packs which can be automatically produced and distributed.
• Provide quick time to value.

Key benefits

• Visibility of close process
• Ease of use
• Confidence in the numbers
• Productivity and efficiency

The results

As a result of OneStream being implemented across the group, Benchmark has realised the following benefits: 

• Complete visibility of the close process showing progress by each entity and division with a record of user activity showing who logged in, what they did and when it was done.
• Improved ease of use with guided workflows and standard report books.
• Confidence in the numbers with improved data quality as a result of in-built validation rules and error messages with prompts on how to resolve at entity level.
• An automated IFRS cashflow based on Balance Sheet movements which allows for manual adjustments where required.
• Increased productivity and efficiency as a result of the automation of IFRS disclosure preparation.

"We implemented OneStream with Concentric and have benefitted from greatly improved productivity and efficiency and significantly improved management information. Concentric brought a combination of systems experience and proven accounting understanding that has helped us deliver a solution that is scalable and easy to deploy." - Group Finance Systems Manager

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