Case Study: Crédito Agrícola Group
“Using Tagetik, we were able to implement a comprehensive consolidation and reporting solution in just 14 weeks. Thanks to the software’s built-in functionality and modern underlying technology, we could easily integrate and unify data from several different platforms throughout our group and leverage it in other processes. Best of all, we have achieved all of our objectives for this project thanks to the excellent support of the consultants at FWD Advise and the ease in customizing Tagetik to our unique needs.” Francisco Machado, Coordinator of the Accounting Department of Accounting and Retail Services
The Crédito Agrícola Group (GCA) is a Portuguese financial group which encompasses 89 local cooperative banks (Caixas Agrícolas) that, in turn, own more than 670 local branches nationwide. Due to its strong community presence, Crédito Agrícola Group plays a strong role in supporting and developing the country’s local economies.
The challenges
While restructuring its accounting department, GSA saw the need to improve its group consolidation and reporting processes as well as its regulatory reporting to the Portuguese Central Bank, Banco de Portugal (BdP). As a result, the group decided to implement a new solution in order to:
- Optimize the consolidation process and minimize manual work
- Ensure reliable data by creating validation rules and cross-check procedures
- Minimize the time and effort needed to create reports
- Adjust reports quickly to meet growing accountability requirements and regulatory standards
The Objectives
- 110 consolidation entities with cross-shareholding positions
- 4 sub-consolidation sites
- Ability to calculate direct and indirect minority interests
- Support for line-by-line and one-line consolidations
- Integration with existing systems: Profile, Primavera, SAP and Navision
- Unified data storage in a single Microsoft SQL Server database
- Implementation of Banco de Portugal’s reporting requirements (Instructions 18/2005;
14/2005; 19/2005) - Monthly management reporting (e.g. margin analysis by region, audit support)
- One-year migration of historical data
The Benefits
Since switching to Tagetik, GSA has been able to reduce the total time needed to consolidate its data
to about four hours – 50% less time than it previously needed. The software’s built-in features have
dramatically accelerated the processes for making adjustments, intercompany and cross-shareholder
eliminations, and calculations of direct and indirect minority interests.
The group intends to expand the current solution in the near future in order to:
- Configure the cost accounting systems to utilize cost center dimensions, activities and service
as well as cost allocation functionality - Create custom management reports (e.g. showing product margins or individual branches)
- Implement entity and cost center dimensions to the budgeting module
