Digitization of business processes of a tycoon in the clothing industry

Until now, all financial consolidation has been done manually Each of the companies used its own standards, which were not unified. Financial statements were prepared by hand. This process required a huge amount of time and involved many people, which was very onerous given the cyclical nature of the activities. An additional problem was the information structure, the reports contained large amounts of tabular data, text blocks and numerical values nested in the text, which made cooperation difficult.

The answer to the challenges faced by the client turned out to be a comprehensive approach to financial consolidation and obligatory reporting (WSE, ESEF) of the capital group. Incube CPM experts proposed a comprehensive approach to defined problems and implementation of IBM Cognos Controller, IBM Planning Analytics and Certent (Certent Disclosure Management) solutions, aimed at improving the entire process.

Taking into account the client's needs, we felt that the project should use two systems. The first is IBM Cognos Controller, which is responsible for the control and transparency of the reporting process by companies in the group. The software easily handles the automatic calculation of consolidated financial figures even in an organization with a multi-level structure. Which was of great importance in the case of The Client. We treated IBM Planning Analytics, on the other hand, as a repository of financial data and a central database holding financial data for reporting periods. It can also be used as a source of additional financial data analysis, if needed.

Certent (Certent Disclosure Management) is not only a central repository of financial reports, where the automation of the preparation of stock exchange reports took place. In addition, validation of the consistency of data in the report takes place there. Better workflow made it possible to improve teamwork, and also added the possibility of XBRL tagging in accordance with ESMA ESEF (European Single Electronic Format) requirements

"The effect of the improvements was to minimize the number of errors and the time taken to prepare reports, which saved a considerable amount of money and gained the needed time for further analysis. A structured and efficient reporting process has also been put in place across all businesses, and the reduction in resources needed to collect data has increased its quality," says Maciej Filutowicz, Incube CPM Team Leader, responsible for the entire implementation.

The implementation carried out by Incube CPM marked the beginning of the digital transformation of the company's finances. Another joint project we are implementing is responsible for ESG (Environment Society Governance) reporting. We created a model that collects non-financial data from across the organization. This includes from nearly 50 affiliated entities outside of Poland. The backbone of the solution is IBM Planning Analytics, which collects non-financial data and aggregates it while preparing it for reporting, and Certent (Certent Disclosure Management), which transforms the collected data into reports. The ESG reporting tool created by Incube CPM not only improves non-financial reporting processes, but also complies with all standards and guidelines in this area.