How AltaLinkimproved its Financial Reporting Process with SAP Disclosure Management with SAP Business Planning and Consolidation

Transcription

1 Orange County Convention Center Orlando, Florida June 3-5, 2014 How AltaLinkimproved its Financial Reporting Process with SAP Disclosure Management with SAP Business Planning and Consolidation Kelly Rodgers and Wendy Reinitz, CMA

2 INTRODUCTIONS WENDY REINITZ, CMA SERVICES DIRECTOR, PERFORMANCE ANALYTICS CORP. (Former Manager of Financial Systems at AltaLink) KELLY RODGERS DM ADMINISTRATOR, EA FINANCE, ALTALINK

3 AGENDA About AltaLink Performance Analytics The Vision Historical Process The Transition Evolution of the Process The Future

4 ABOUT ALTALINK AltaLink is Alberta s largest transmission service provider Serves 85% of Alberta s population; service area of 212,000 square km Maintains over 12,000 km of transmission lines and 280 substations Incredible growth from $1.22B PP&E in Dec, 2008 to $5.16B in Dec, 2013 AltaLink is building approximately $7 billion of transmission infrastructure in the next 5 years -one of the most ambitious transmission expansions in North America

5 About Performance Analytics North American consulting firm focused exclusively on SAP Enterprise Performance Management solutions, Business Intelligence (Hana/Cloud) for the Office of the CFO SAP BusinessObjects Gold Partner Implementing SAP Planning and Consolidation (BPC) since 2003 Consultants located across North America Consultants have Finance background, MBA,CPA,CMA, CGA, CA Services include: Evaluation, Design, Implementation, Project Management, and Training

6 THE VISION AUTOMATION OF FS Produce Board-ready, publishable financial statements from SAP using automated processes Requirements Must be able to incorporate last-minute changes Must be secure Must be auditable Documents and versions are controlled Branding and consistent formatting is easily maintained

7 BUSINESS CHALLENGES IDENTIFIED Consolidations Complex rules for regulated accounting Rule changes for IFRS Growth including non regulated opportunities Accounting getting more complex as joint ventures are added Financial Statements Formatting altered easily Hard to workflow to executive for MDA content No version control Lack of ownership for sections of documents

8 BUSINESS CHALLENGES IDENTIFIED The need to tighten the close to disclose process was driven by shorter timelines from our owners. Additional complexities with IFRS reporting. Many adjustments occurring outside the system Where to start? Automate/Build Reports Cash Flow CANB Determine owners of reports and information updates for MD&A.

9 TIMELINE First identified the need for better reporting coming from ERP Implemented process and system changes to control data for automated cash flow in SAP/ERP First BW reports went live New GL Implemented, 2nd ledger used for regulatory reporting Began scoping system and reporting changes related to IFRS conversion Went live with 3rd ledger (Special Ledger) Reporting re-done in BOBJ to point to new ledger Began scoping requirements to support reporting issues identified during the IFRS project Started scoping first BPC and Disclosure Management Projects Implemented Disclosure Management for main reporting entity Implemented Disclosure Management for holding and investment reporting entity Implemented BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation)

10 Automating the End to End Financial Close Financial Accounting Entity Close Corporate Close Reporting and Disclosure General Ledger Entity Close Management Reporting and Analysis Sub-Ledgers Intercompany Reconciliation Consolidation Notes Management Disclosure Management Financial Close Governance Internal Controls Master Data Governance for Financials

11 BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation)

12 CHOOSING A SOLUTION Why did we choose BPC (Consolidations)? Examined IT road map and determined that automating consolidations is the first step in automating the corporate reporting processes Additional functionality that could be leveraged in the future, i.e. foreign currency translations. Position the Finance department to more easily incorporate future AltaLink entities and joint ventures into the consolidation process We are an SAP shop

13 BPC What we determined was BPC would. Improve quality of data collection Automate manual processes, removing many risks of errors Allow ease of report creation Handle financial functions for analysis Allow business to have more control over process

14 Road for Implementation - BPC Project Model #1 Turn-key approach, get the contractor to do the work, based on requirements Issues Contractor s level of expertise Project planning and team coordination Lack of knowledge for business and IT staff -we weren t prepared so we didn t know the right questions to ask Integration with ECC and BW data Clear and consistent definition of requirements and understanding requirements Lag in identifying issues and addressing them

15 Road for Implementation - BPC Project Model #2 Collaborative approach with new vendor Vendor spent time training the team before asking questions Vendor much more knowledgeable Business and IT staff more knowledgeable Issues ERP data not clean Staffing issues on the business side Issues with accommodating balance dependant accounts from ECC

16 BPC Benefits received Statements and associated calculations are more accurate Processes more visible, streamlined and automated Easy to introduce new entities More flexible reporting Reporting responsibilities are in the business

17 BPC Lessons learned Educate your team before you contract Engage experienced, reputable contractors Monitor the progress closely Be realistic in scope and timeline

18 Disclosure Management

19 EVOLUTION OF THE PROCESS MANUAL CLOSE Financial systems staff run month end close routines in SAP ERP This was a two-day process Corporate Reporting group manually calculate NCI and other adjustments, other adjusting entries, manual consolidation entries, manual cash flow process Run financial statements from BW; manual rounding process to $ millions for MDA and to $ thousands for financial statements

20 EVOLUTION OF THE PROCESS MANUAL CONSOLIDATION PROCESS Used poor man s consolidation; using dummy companies in SAP to post elimination entries Calculations for intercompany transactions done manually MANUAL FINANCIAL STATEMENT PROCESS Financial Statements and other disclosure documents created in MS Word with Excel tables Manual copy paste from prior periods Manual update of numbers into tables for statements and notes Prone to errors Lack of security over editing and formatting Risks with version control and auditability

21 EVOLUTION OF THE PROCESS MANUAL REVIEW PROCESS Review of Note and MD&A Disclosure Word document sent to Disclosure Committee members for information requests and updates. Often receive updates and/or wordsmithingon the same sections from multiple people; not necessarily the information owner. Review of numbers Controller/CFO review Multiple levels of paper review Incomplete audit trail; missing Csox controls Disclosure Committee Board of Directors

22 EVOLUTION OF THE PROCESS COMMON ERRORS Transposition errors Version Control Inconsistent Rounding Often, due to last minute changes, numbers weren t captures in all 3 companies, leading to questions on inconsistencies between numbers that should not change External Printing of investor packages Disclosure documents re-created to be consistent with external communication branding standards Required additional internal and external review Expensive and time-consuming process

23 TODAY S REALITY Company growth and owner demands required faster turn around of publishable financial information Manual processes to accommodate this not sustainable How can we automate the close to disclose process to address our challenges?

24 DISCLOSURE MANAGEMENT Why did we choose Disclosure Management? Reduce the time, risk and cost of regulatory disclosures Speed and flexibility Accelerate the generation of disclosure statements Integrate data for a single view across the organization Optimize the close from source to digital disclosure Collaboration Assign disclosure responsibility to distributed teams Automate integration and data flow Designed for ownership by finance professionals Compliance and control In-house production of trusted financial statements Support multiple financial and regulatory statements Enable creation of XBRL-based statements, should Canadian Securities Regulators move to XBRL filings

25 DISCLOSURE MANAGEMENT Road to implementation Project Model Sent our documents to the vendor and they built them off-site in their environment Vendor provided training prior to go-live Ongoing support from Vendor Issues No vendor on-site for go-live Step missed in overall install, leading to errors in the program Some data from vendor system came over on go-live

26 DISCLOSURE MANGEMENT Benefits gained Minimal manual processes in document preparation Less time spent on Q&A Efficient Lessons Learned Be clear on who owns and maintains the system IT or the business

27 CONNECTING THE PIECES Build Data Cache Build Report Templates Connect the two It really was as simple as that

28 CONNECTING THE PIECES Data source(s) linked to DM DM Data Repository Data Sources Excel File SAP ERP BPC Etc. BS CF IS CIS Balance Sheet Word Chapter Cash Flow Word Chapter A DM Data Repository excel chapter is dynamically linked with external data source(s). Controlled updatesin the DM Data Repository excel chapter allow dynamic refreshes from the data source(s) into the DM word chapters Income Statement Word Chapter Financial Notes Word Chapters

29 MANAGING THE DOCUMENTS

30 MANAGING THE DOCUMENTS Data integrity Tables and individual values feed multiple documents, providing comfort for review. Changes in values and calculation results can trigger changes in key words for analytics (e.g. increased to decreased )

31 CHALLENGES Change in Financial Reporting Staff at go-live New to Industry New to SAP ERP Start date was quarter-end close DM was a new product few expert resources

32 QUICK WINS Familiarity with key programs even new staff were strong in Word and Excel, which is what they see, regardless of what s happening in the background Immediate audit trail Consistent formatting polished and professional looking end document No need to re-send to external graphic designer = cost savings Version control One document owner

33 QUICK WINS As the interface is with the familiaryms Office Suite, implementing new software was not scary End users were already comfortable with their bread and butter tools Analysts are power-users of Excel Report editor is power-user in Word Noonehad to be an SAP expert; once the system reports were configured, it was as simple as pushing some buttons

34 KEYS TO OUR SUCCESS Multi-stage implementation Q2, 2012 Publicly reported company (ALP) Financial Statements and MD&A Problems on go-live led to only a partial implementation Q3, 2012 Full automation of ALP; no changes between Disclosure Committee and Board approval Year end 2012 Full Automation of Holding Company Q1, 2013 Full Automation of Investment Company Q1, 2014 Grant access to Sr. Executive team and utilize workflow functionality Q1, Integration of BPC Reporting Q3, 2014 Automate monthly management report 2015 and beyond use DM for preparation of General Tariff Application, Report on Operations to Energy Regulator

35 KEYS TO OUR SUCCESS Forward Planning Q3, 2014 Automate monthly management report To accommodate tighter deadlines, and other reporting requirements as may become necessary due to change in ownership and beyond use DM for preparation of General Tariff Application, Report on Operations to Energy Regulator Leveraging existing reports We have updated existing report structures to include robust information that may be required in future, which will allow us to use

36 THANK YOU THANK YOU FOR PARTICIPATING Please provide feedback on this session by completing a short survey via the event mobile application. SESSION CODE: 1611 For ongoing education on this area of focus, visit