Since 2000, Emerald Technology has been helping businesses unlock borders and grow their international teams with a combination of customer-centric support and an easy-to-navigate cloud platform. Providing services including recruitment and full employee life cycle management, as an Employer of Record (EOR) it takes care of payroll, taxes, benefits and local compliance for customers who wish to hire resources overseas without having a physical presence in those countries.
“We fully expect the overall reduction in time across all processes to enable us to double in size without increasing finance headcount.” Mike Newton, Finance Director
WHAT WERE EMERALD TECHNOLOGY’S CHALLENGES?
Having expanded into many new territories as the company developed its full EOR offering, Emerald Technology was suffering from process and infrastructure issues across the full finance function. Consistent double-digit increases in turnover, plus the need for a new subsidiary per territory, meant that the existing system simply wasn’t able to cope with the demands and increasing complexity of the company setup.
Due to limitations with its legacy finance system, Emerald Technologies was required a separate instance of the software for each subsidiary. This not only increased overall administration time in keeping each up to date, but prevented the business from performing necessary intercompany transactions and from achieving the consolidated reporting that enables visibility at group level. All of which created barriers for the company’s desired geographic expansion.
Elements of the accounts receivable and accounts payable processes had to be managed within Excel instead of in the finance system, which meant the team was operation blind with respect to discrepancies. The system was also unable to service the complex combinations of currencies, exchange rates and tax regulations involved in payroll – processes that are fundamental to operating in international recruitment.
Mike Newton, Finance Director at Emerald Technology explains;
“The consultation process enabled us to take the time to consider exactly how we wanted NetSuite set up, along with the reporting requirements we would have immediately and as we grew. We are delighted that the implementation has produced results exactly in line with those expected, and we’re finding that things are still improving month-on-month”.
SELECTING A SOLUTION
Finding a cloud-based accounting solution that could manage up to 20 subsidiaries with associated currencies, exchange rates and tax regulations, as well as removing the large amount of Excel-based processes, was essential for Emerald Technology as a growing, multi-entity company.
As one of the UK’s premier Oracle NetSuite partners, Eureka Solutions was delighted to recommend NetSuite’s OneWorld solution to provide a unified global financial solution for its multinational and multi-subsidiary operations. All entities across all countries are now managed in one instance of NetSuite, which provides real time consolidated reporting, intercompany transaction management and automated intercompany elimination. NetSuite’s bank feeds module and auto-matching process provides much faster bank reconciliations and cash reporting.
Alongside the NetSuite implementation, Eureka Solutions provided bespoke development work to extend the sales order processing function to manage contracts in territory with an automated billing process that reconciled the exchange rates and agreements needed to bill each client.
Month end processes are now completed in one third of the time. Close used to take until day 18 but now we have a draft position by day 6, whereas all sales are now registered instantaneously when they previously could take several weeks.
Mike Newton
Finance Director | Emerald Technology
THE RESULTS
Mike Newton, Finance Director at Emerald Technology, credits rigorous planning with ensuring the solution delivered everything they required. The whole team has benefited from time savings in completing manual tasks: “Removing manual keying-in processes and the duplication of data across multiple systems has drastically reduced processing times; we’re operating five times faster, as well as being more accurate now.”
“The consolidated reporting we now have allows us to get a deep view across all subsidiaries and we’ve certainly achieved our primary targets of speeding up time to close month end, complete bank reconciliations and to register sales. Month end processes are now completed in one third of the time. Close used to take until day 18 but now we have a draft position by day 6, whereas all sales are now registered instantaneously when they previously could take several weeks.”
BENEFITS REALISED
- One instance of NetSuite required to manage the entire global business
- A fivefold increase in processing speed
- Time to close month end books reduced by 67%. It previously took until day 18, now have a draft position by day 6
- Time to reconcile bank transactions reduced by 80% – from the fifth day to the first day of the month
- Registering sales and purchase invoices now instantaneous, providing real time reporting and analysis
- 100% reduction in manual data entry with resultant eradication of manual data errors