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CASE STUDY

ASCO

ABOUT THE CLIENTASCO is a leading international oil and gas servicescompany. With operations in Australia, Canada, the Caspian, Holland, Norway, Oman, Singapore, Trinidad, theUK and the USA, the organisation operates in more parts ofthe world than any other international oilfield support services company and employs in excess of 2,000 people worldwide. ASCO provide products and services that encompass almost every aspect of oil and gas industry: onshore and offshore support services, international logistics, waste management, inventory and materials management as well as people and advisory services.

INDUSTRY

Energy sector BUSINESS CHALLENGE• Current System out of Maintenance• Lack of Multi-dimensional Analysis

EOH SOLUTION• SAP BPC• Database Centric• Web Forms and Spreadsheets• Simple to Develop in-house

BUSINESS IMPACT• Inter-company Trading Analysis• Total Operational Visibility • Peace of Mind: Maintained & Developed Platform

The business

challengeASCO had been using Comshare’s FDC product to produce their management reporting information for more than ten years. Installed in 1996, the system had worked adequately and hadbeen through a number of significant upgrades. However, it hadremained essentially unchanged during that period.

“Although it functioned, the old application only ever providedus with a bare bones solution,” says Kevin Slowey, Group Finance Systems Manager “so when it became apparent that the software package was no longer being supported by FDC, we decided that we needed to move to a new system as soon as we possibly could.”

Using the FDC tool the group had been able to capture, consolidate and report actuals, forecasts and budgets as well as compiling the group’s consolidated statutory accounts. The initial brief from the Group Executive Committee then was to provide a like-for-like replacement that would replicate the existing system’s reporting output as closely as possible. Even so, there were key areas that the ASCO team felt could be improved upon, the most significant of these being true multidimensional analysis of the consolidated data, greater visibility and control of intercompany trading, improved data integrity/transparency and the ability to provide reports in a more simple and timely way.

“We felt that by modernising the technology we could move to a more self-service method of report provision and have the capability which would then allow us to export consolidated data into Excel, Word or web reports,” says Slowey.

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With a view to moving rapidly, the ASCO finance teamengaged EOH to help them select a product that could beimplemented as quickly and effectively as possible.

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After a brief period of requirement collection, EOH ascertained that, as a minimum, the new system would need to provide the following features:• Conversion from locally reported currencies into a base

currency (Sterling) and other currencies• Consolidation of different planned and actual data sets encompassing single period, multiple period and multiple calendar years• Consolidation using multiple exchange rates and differing exchange rate sets• Consolidation of different data sets at different sets of exchange rates (for example, actual at actual rate, actual at budget rate, forecast at forecast rate, forecast at budget rate and budget at budget rate)• Re-consolidation of last year actual or current year plans at current actual rates to allow comparison on a like-for-like basis• A manual journal process with a full audit trail of all adjustments• Automatic calculation of exchange movements• Multiple group structures (for example by providing different legal entity and segment hierarchies)• Calculation of cash flow movements

Once this requirement gathering process was complete, EOHdeveloped a short list of suppliers that could meet ASCO’s needs.

“We looked at the shortlisted solutions closely and conductedreference calls,” says Slowey. “We wanted to evaluate both thesoftware product and the supplier organisation. We knew that wecould be using the replacement system for a considerable time,so we wanted to make sure that we chose a solution that wasopen and that would scale. Consequently, we felt that the SAPBPC application was the best solution for us.”

The tight project timescale meant that the finance team neededto move quickly and so ASCO developed a business case,purchased a number of BPC licences and a few man-days ofconsultancy from EOH all within a couple of months. “We really were up against it in terms of time,” says Slowey, “so we had to move as fast as we could. Our primary objective was to use those first consultancy days to train our own in-house resources, that way we could put together an internal implementation team and get working on delivery as soon as possible.”

The

requirement

In order to meet both the aggressive timescales involved and theenterprise’s like-for-like requirements, the development approachadopted by EOH took advantage of the similarities between the two products. Since both FDC and SAP BPC used Excel add-ins in order to collect submission data from local offices, the application design took the old input templates and converted them to work with the BPC database. “We kept the formatting and the layout of the old system,” says Slowey, “this meant that from an end user perspective the new system could be moved into place with the minimum of disruption.”

Similarly, the EOH project plan was designed to avoid as many of the pitfalls of a “big-bang” approach as possible. Indeed, the initial delivery to the new BPC system of next year’s budgets was run in parallel with the old FDC-based process, allowing data from both systems to be compared. This way, ASCO felt 100% confident that the new BPC system was producing the correct results.

This initial phase was followed by delivering the statutory accounts reporting pack which was rolled out in BPC-only.

As soon as these first two delivery phases were complete, wequickly progressed to phase 3 comprising January managementaccounts submission and consolidation on the BPC application.

The

solution

“We had been working with EOH ever since the initial implementation of FDC and so we had a good relationship with them and trusted their judgement as a long term partner,” says Slowey.

Moreover, since much of the application development was doneby an in-house team of three people, ASCO feels comfortable that they can support the system without incurring large maintenance bills. As Slowey says, “we found BPC much easier to use than the old product we had been using. For example, FDC required lots of formulas. That’s something that we don’t have to worry about with BPC because it’s database-centric. Put simply, the SAP product is just a lot easier to understand.”

Similarly, BPC’s integrated database and web front-end meanthat the finance team at ASCO feel that they have developed aconsolidation platform that is effectively future proof. “We’re inthe process of selecting a new accounting system as our nextproject.” says Slowey, “and while we know that some reworkingof the consolidation system will be required in order to extractand load actuals from the new accounting package, one of thebenefits of BPC is that it’s a very open system and we really don’t have any concerns about being able to interface it with whatever accounting package we eventually choose.”

In conclusion, it’s clear that the new consolidation systemprovides ASCO with more insight into it’s business than waspreviously possible. “We’re now able to get a much better senseof our inter-company and debtor/creditor loan positions andthis was something that we just couldn’t do before without lotsof manual effort,” says Slowey. “What we’re able to do now isprovide greater visibility and control over inter-company trading.It’s early days yet, but we really feel as though we’re makinghuge strides forward.”

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About

EOHFounded in 1996 EOH UK has been making a tangible difference to the finance function for decades. We build trusted relationships by bolting deep business know-how and proven technology capabilities to our collaborative leadership values.

At the heart of our success is the recognition that building trust with clients is critical. We go to extraordinary lengths to understand the full picture, from current challenges to future goals, while inspiring clients to become more visionary across the system landscape.

Breaking away from legacy systems and streamlining processes is a bold and increasingly necessary step. Choosing EOH UK ensures you have a partner with you at every step of that journey.

Together we deliver the optimum technology solution – grounded in pragmatism but always with an eye on innovation. The result? A faster, leaner, smarter solution delivering returns as well as improved business performance.

Technology makes it possible, people make it happen.

“Even though we faced some significant challenges, during itsdevelopment we went from buying our initial set of licences in July to producing our first draft statutory consolidation pack in the new system by the end of January of the following year. That’s remarkably fast.”“Here again, we adopted the same principle of running BPC inparallel with FDC thereby ensuring verification of data integrity inBPC,” says Slowey.

In phase 4, BPC was expanded to incorporate the collection ofinter-company loan-debtor and loan-creditor information as wellas being enhanced to provide automated matching of intercompany sales and purchases, areas that had been the source of long standing manual processes and data integrity issues. “The visibility that the new system has brought to inter-company and loan transactions has proved particularly valuable,” says Slowey, “as it was something that we simply couldn’t provide with our old system.”

Once the BPC system was securely in place, the ASCO andEOH team began rolling it out to the rest of the world. This isan on-going process, but one that has been greatly simplified bythe web front-end provided by the SAP BPC application.

As Slowey explains, “Once we had the spreadsheet version ofthe system bedded down and working as expected, we startedto look at enhancing it to make use of BPC’s web-forms. Using aweb-based system has many advantages over an Excel-basedone. You don’t need to distribute templates for example. This issomething that we’re currently working on, but I feel confidentthat we can build on the success that we’ve already had.”

Key to that success has been ASCO’s relationship with EOH.“We’ve been very happy with their approach and support,”says Slowey. “Certainly, we’ve had a very long and successfulrelationship with them as a partner, but in this case we wereparticularly impressed by the consulting resources they wereable provide us with. For example, initially we encountered someteething issues due to differences between version 7 and version10 of BPC. We were able to just pick up the phone and getresources on site to help us at very short notice. That really made a difference.”

ASCO’s new BPC application has had many positive impacts onthe organisation. “The single most overreaching benefit is peaceof mind that we are on a fully supported platform,” says Slowey,“and that we are using a product which is being developed bySAP very actively.”

The

benefits