Many businesses rely on manual (Excel driven) processes to collate and consolidate data from multiple sources, in order to produce their periodic results and forecasts. As a business grows, it’s not only the amount of data sources that grow. The amount of information one needs to report to various stakeholders also increase exponentially. As a result, the reporting and planning processes can become tedious, time-consuming and inefficient.
UK-listed corporation, Gem Diamonds Ltd, which specialises in the mining of high value diamonds, found out how much of a difference it can make to embrace more efficient ways of working by adopting a financial reporting and planning software solution that automates the data collection and consolidation process.
Kiki Constantopoulos, Group Financial Controller at Gem Diamonds, says, “The system we had in place involved numerous Excel sheets that needed to be open and worked on simultaneously. Over the years, this system had become increasingly and extremely complicated as finance people would come and go in the business. New employees joining the finance team would have to take on a legacy system that was at this point highly convoluted.”
Gem Diamonds Ltd operates the Letšeng diamond mine in Lesotho (currently producing the most valuable diamonds in the world) as well as the Ghaghoo mine in Botswana (currently on care and maintenance). Gem Diamonds comprises eight companies as part of the global group, with several worldwide subsidiaries based in diverse locations, from Lesotho to London.
Despite its global presence and an annual revenue of between $150 to $200 million, Gem operates on a relatively small scale. With limited financial resources, and considering the declining diamond prices in the market, the group remains heavily cost conscious.
Being solely Microsoft Excel-based, Gem Diamonds had been managing its financial data collection, consolidation and reporting systems through largely manual interventions. “The result was that the entire process became very time-consuming, prone to error, and Excel would crash constantly because we just had so many documents open at the same time,” says Constantopoulos.
There was also high staff turnover in finance positions responsible for overseeing this process as individuals became overworked and overburdened.
From 2017, Gem Diamonds embarked on a significant transformation process in order to create a leaner and more agile business. Following the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020, Constantopoulos says that the business was finally able to pause and re-evaluate its reporting and consolidation systems during lockdown.
It was at this point that Constantopoulos and her team engaged the South Africa-based Finnivo® support team to help with implementing Finnivo® software, providing her input in terms of what she needed to achieve, which would then be implemented in the customised way she needed.
Gem Diamonds’ accounting and reporting processes typically consisted of separate processes for monthly, half year and annual reporting, and a different process for business planning and budgeting. Finnivo® helped to streamline these processes so that they run simultaneously on a monthly basis, allowing the finance team to access and drill down on information far more efficiently.
Where consolidation and reporting used to take up to eight full working days, now with Finnivo® it takes Constantopoulos and her team less than a day. “We’ve shaved off almost two weeks from the entire process” she says.
“We were able to keep the system and reporting packs with the same look and feel as our old one, which meant that the data was in the same format, and this made it much easier for our team to adapt to the new system,” says Constantopoulos. “Now, however, the final outputs are much sleeker and easier on the eye, with a colour scheme that’s consistent throughout all our documents. What’s great is that our subsidiary companies have also started adapting to the colour and format of these too.”
Finnivo® also assisted Gem Diamonds in streamlining audit process, which can often be a stressful experience for businesses. Auditors were given access to view files and data on Finnivo® without editing capabilities, and Finnivo’s® unique drill-down feature allowed them to find the information they needed without having to enquire with the finance teams. “The auditors also trusted the outcomes from the system over the years following their testing and did not identify any errors” adds Constantopoulos.
Choosing the right financial planning and reporting software is crucial not just for streamlining data collection, consolidation, reporting and presentation processes. Having systems in place that can be customised to a business’s and finance team’s unique requirements creates efficiencies and enhances productivity immensely.