Customer Success Story

Financial and Legal Services Firm Accelerates Access to Oracle Data with GL Wand

State Trustees Limited in Australia achieves faster, deeper, and more diverse financial reporting for informed business decisions with this Microsoft Excel-based tool.

Based in Melbourne, Australia, State Trustees Limited provides its clients with financial and legal assistance, including wills, powers of attorney, executor and trustee services, and personal finance administration. With such an emphasis on finances, it is not surprising that the service firm’s own internal finance and reporting team would look for the most efficient way possible to access and present data from the company’s Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) system.

An Oracle EBS user since 1996, State Trustees upgraded to Oracle R12 in 2012, but bottlenecks with financial reporting continued. It took hours to run the required Oracle Financial Statement Generator reports (FSGs), which were also limited in visual appearance for easy data comprehension. After managerial requests for more regular and efficient reporting, the finance team sought an alternative to FSGs and landed on GL Wand, a real-time Microsoft Excel-based tool from Excel4apps.

FSGs “Clunky,” Hard to UseAs the finance team went through a re-training for the Oracle FSG application in 2014 due to team changes, it was decided that there “surely must be a better, more efficient way” to report from the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, according to Nicholas Thoroughgood, Accountant at State Trustees.

“We weren’t really having particular issues with Oracle FSG, but it was clunky, hard to use, and required a level of knowledge within the team that might continually require re-training if further changes occurred,” said Thoroughgood. “With the volume

of reports required and the hours it took to run Oracle FSG profit & loss statements (P&Ls) alone, we needed faster data access. Reconciliations alone took a week to create.”

Additionally, the FSG templates lacked visual appeal. “The FSG report formats remained the same throughout the years and didn’t fit our corporate branding,” Thoroughgood said. “We wanted the ability to customize them.”

In 2015, after completing research for potential alternatives, State Trustees utilized a third party to obtain “a good level of feedback and reference” for GL Wand from Excel4apps, according to Thoroughgood. Next, an in-house demonstration from Excel4apps of the tool, which features a link to live Oracle general ledger (GL) data through an Excel interface, convinced the team ― and management ― that it fit their streamlining and data presentation needs.

Seamless Transition for Finance, BusinessWith no requirements for additional hardware or software, GL Wand had a “simple install, simple setup from an IT perspective,” said Thoroughgood. The same went for user training within the finance team, provided on-site by Excel4apps.

“Having Excel4apps come in and give group training was very useful, especially for a team transitioning from FSGs that are very static compared to GL Wand, which provides dynamic, real-time reports they could use for more and different

“Our P&L reports previously took four people an average of two hours each to run, which is now down to just half an hour each on average with GL Wand.”

Nicholas Thoroughgood, State Trustees Limited

Accountant

“ Reconciliations previously taking a week to put together now take five minutes with GL Wand.”

Nicholas Thoroughgood, State Trustees Limited

Accountant

Oracle database. As compared with having to run multiple trial balance reports to pull the data, GL Wand tells us immediately,” explained Thoroughgood.

From a fixed assets perspective, automating reconciliations has made for more agile business decisions.

“Reconciliations previously taking a week to put together now take five minutes with GL Wand,” Thoroughgood explained. “For fixed assets, we can now analyze changes and regularly provide them to the business units so we get better information out to and from the business about how assets are utilized and whether they need disposal. Previously, this was only done quarterly, and it took a month for the units to get back to us. Now, it’s done monthly, meaning there are more accurate reports available for making determinations regarding assets.”

Drilling Beneath the DigitsWith the Excel-based reporting tool’s ability to drill into real-time sub ledger details behind figures at a mouse click, State Trustees can now answer ad hoc queries directly from their P&L statements, whereas it previously had to go into GL listings that were “clunky and looked horrible,” said Thoroughgood. While the finance team is using the drill down feature “a fair bit,” the reporting tool has helped identify some Oracle issues that they are now addressing.

“Some issues with listing codes within our Oracle setup have meant that we can’t yet drill down the way we’ve intended,” Thoroughgood explained. “As we further improve our reporting, we ultimately plan to move GL Wand out to the business units, showing them how they can capitalize on the drill downs and other functionality.”

Automated Distribution on the HorizonAs State Trustees evolves its reports in GL Wand, it will soon add balance sheet and cash flow statements. It also plans to further improve timeliness using the tool’s Reports Distribution Manager (RDM). RDM automates report distribution via email in various formats, including refreshable Excel, Excel Snapshot, PDF, and HTML.

“Our executives have requested a variety of reports via email, which we intend on automating,” said Thoroughgood. “But RDM’s ability for us to include a summary P&L for each executive right now by just clicking ‘run’ so they can see their key figures is already expediting more and better decisions.”

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purposes,” said Thoroughgood. “Group training also allowed us to identify super users within our own team who we could tap into for GL Wand advice.”

While Thoroughgood said that re-developing individual FSGs in GL Wand was easy, the sheer volume of reports needing conversion to GL Wand was the most time consuming portion of the transition, along with verifying the new reports worked properly.

“We were committed to making a smooth transition for our business units, so we made the GL Wand reports look similar to FSGs at first,” described Thoroughgood. “As we became confident that reports were running correctly, we started customizing the report designs as intended.”

The Excel-based financial reporting tool remains low maintenance for IT, while allowing finance users to stay self-sufficient.

“IT hasn’t had to provide any support, except for upgrades, as the finance team can tap into Excel4apps for help,” Thoroughgood said. “Even then, we haven’t had to go back to Excel4apps with many questions aside from when we first started creating reports. It’s been a very seamless solution for us. And, we can also refer to a video library through the online user community.”

Exponentially Faster ReportingStandard P&L reports were some of the first ones State Trustees transferred to the new Excel-based financial reporting tool, with significant performance results.

“Our P&L reports previously took four people an average of two hours each to run, which is now down to just half an hour each on average with GL Wand,” said Thoroughgood. “GL Wand is exponentially faster, meaning we have more time to focus on actually looking behind the numbers rather than just reporting them.”

From management’s perspective, the finance team’s ability to change report designs and provide more useful information has been well received.

“We can leverage Excel formulas, as well as GL Wand formulas, to make reports more versatile, as we can now access more information than we’ve ever been able to provide,” Thoroughgood explained. “In terms of its standard templates and standard information, this tool’s click and drag functionality easily and quickly gives us the information we need – and in real time.” Some of the areas where State Trustees is expanding report diversity are rolling 12 month reports and budgeted P&Ls. “In the past, we haven’t developed these reports because the information was too difficult to put together with FSGs,” said Thoroughgood.

Automated Reconciliations Score BigAnother promising application of GL Wand for State Trustees has been account reconciliations, which were time prohibitive with FSGs. “Finance can pull out GL listings incredibly quickly with GL Wand so that we reconcile figures directly from the

“We can leverage Excel formulas, as well as GL Wand formulas, to make reports more versatile, as we can now access more information than we’ve ever been able to provide.”

Nicholas Thoroughgood, State Trustees Limited Accountant

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