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ÖoB – one of Sweden’s leading low-price retail chains with 85 stores and revenues of 3.7 billion SEK (€415 million) – looked to Addedo to assist them in moving from reporting and consolidating in spreadsheets to a standard system. They needed a robust solution for their internal and external reporting requirements, multiple accounting standards and complex currency calculations in an efficient manner while giving them a more detailed view of financial performance across the group. With three or four new stores opening every year, the Group found that its financial structure was becoming increasingly complex. The accounting department needs to perform regular financial consolidations to meet a range of needs – including both internal month-end reporting and a comprehensive annual financial statement.

“We were using a manual, spreadsheet-based process for financial consolidation, and it took a long time to complete,” explains Olle Kalmelid, accounting manager at Runsven Group. He continues, “We had an overall picture of what was happening in the business, but we couldn’t drill down and see how individual stores were performing,” “Moreover, we also had concerns about the security of the data and the risk of human error.”

Runsven Group chose IBM Cognos Controller as the solution because it was an industry standard consolidation system, allowed them to maintain the application and reports within the finance group and was impressed with the flexibility and ease of integration with their enterprise financial system. “We wanted an industry-standard solution so that it would be easy for us to get support,” comments Olle Kalmelid. “Cognos is used by a large number of companies in Sweden, so there are many good consultants available. We were also impressed with the flexibility of Cognos.”

Using IBM Cognos Controller also eliminated majority of the manual workload they currently perform allowing them to provide reports to senior management more quickly and frequently. Kalmelid says, “It’s really a ‘push button’ solution – all the data collection, currency conversions and other calculations are done automatically, and we don’t need to worry about data quality because the process works without human intervention.”

To handle the implementation of IBM Cognos Controller, the Group worked with Addedo. The first step was to set up a project team, which included four Runsven employees and one Addedo consultant. “The aim was for our in-house team to do as much as possible on their own, because we wanted to become self-sufficient,” explains Olle Kalmelid. “The consultant from Addedo was highly proficient, and we learned a lot from her during the project about how to build reports, so now we can manage and extend the solution without much external help. We were very pleased with the support we received from Addedo, and we hope to work with them again on future projects.”

Linda Jacov Senior Consultant at Addedo is thrilled over the project. “This is a success story I would say, the customer were engaged and always prepared for every meeting. This is probably the main reason why the entire implementation took only eight days of my time”, she exclaims.

Their future plans include expanding the application to provide KPIs and additional data required by IFRS and the company’s annual report as well as the user-base, both data providers and consumers.

“Working with Addedo to deploy IBM Cognos Controller has already had a significant impact on the ease of creating financial reports across the Runsven Group, and we hope to see further benefits when we roll it out to the other group companies,” concludes Kalmelid.

Contact

Johan Berggårdh, Managing Partner, Addedo Ab
Email: johan.berggardh@addedo.com

Olle Kalmelid, Accounting Manager, Runsven Group

About Runsven Group
Runsven Group (Runsvegruppen AB) provides low-price retail of household goods, leisure articles, do-it-yourself products, home textiles, non-durables and food. Most of its sales are generated by the wholly owned retail chain ÖoB, and the Group also acts as a wholesaler that provies goods to independent traders. ÖoB is one of Sweden’s leading low-price retail chains; it currently has 85 stores geographically spread across the entire country. Goods are supplied to ÖoB via the wholesaler Runsven AB’s central warehouse in Skänninge, and also via direct delivery from distributors. The Group employs approximately 1,600 people and generates revenues of 3.7 billion SEK (€415 million).

About Addedo
Addedo is a fast growing international consultancy. Its consultants work primarily for the CFO and Group Finance function, but also for LOB Managers. Through its management, application and interim consultancy, Addedo helps its customers gain better insight into their business performance. Specifically it helps customers improve on their reporting, consolidation, planning, budget and analysis processes and systems.

Addedo has offices in London, Malmo, Stockholm and Zug. Many of its consultants are however engaged in projects across the world, serving a large client base ranging from emerging business to the largest Fortune 3500. Addedo is partner-owned, and all shareholders are operative in the company. It strives to be the pan-European consultancy partner to Group Finance.