2count
2know
2control
2gether
2link
2deliverNews article
30 November 2004
CODA Collaborative Close is a unique, award winning application built using Microsoft Office technologies. It is designed to help organizations ‘close their books’ more quickly, more dependably and more predictably, giving financial professionals more time to analyze and consider data before making crucial decisions.
Uniquely, CODA Collaborative Close recognizes and supports the collaborative processes that underpin period close; other products in this area focus purely on consolidating and reporting the finance figures, not on collaborative processes that are key to collecting and verifying the figures in the first place, and that are traditionally carried out manually. An added benefit is that it only uses IT infrastructure and technology that the customer is very likely to be already using.
Roularta will use CODA Collaborative Close to help manage its monthly financial period closing process. As a diverse group of more than 50 publishing, broadcasting and media companies, Roularta’s finance professionals gather financial information from every part of the group each month in order to produce accurate and timely management financial reports and statutory reporting packs.
Roularta Media Group has standardized on CODA-Financials and CODA e-Finance for financial transaction processing, and is proud to be the first organization to commit to a full-scale implementation of CODA Collaborative Close. However, as with many companies, the financial processes across the group vary due to merger and acquisition activity, and due to the different business models of the companies within the group. This adds complexity to the task of gathering information to close the financial period and makes it impossible to fully automate with conventional systems.
Jean Pierre Dejaeghere, CFO at Roularta Media Group, said: “CODA Collaborative Close will help us to gain visibility and therefore improve the control and auditability of our financial closing process. To date we have had to rely on traditional, manual methods which can be time consuming and which make the process hard to track. CODA Collaborative Close will give us complete visibility of the process from start to finish, and by recording every activity, it will help us understand how to improve our processes. Our aim is to ensure that our accountants spend more time adding value to management and performance information, and less time chasing data.”
Financial period close is a collaborative process of questions and answers, of confirming detailed information, of individuals collaborating to arrive at the answer and generating a picture in numbers of the organization’s current financial situation. Every organization in the world has to address this, and they all have different processes. CODA Collaborative Close uses the latest technologies and features from Microsoft Office 2003, Microsoft Sharepoint Portal Server and Microsoft Office Infopath together with unique task modeling technology from CODA to manage approvals, exception reporting, stock reconciliations, aged debt processes and a string of other potential bottlenecks in the period end closing process.
Tim Tribe ACMA, Head of Product Management at CODA Group, said, “Period end reporting is a challenge for all accounts departments. The challenge gets greater the more distributed the organization is. The use of technology to take the sting from the process, to enable people to collaborate, to progress tasks and to automate postings will finally deliver a true fast period close to business.”
Roularta Media Group takes control with CODA Collaborative Close
- International media group implements CODA’s new business process management system to speed a smooth financial period closure
CODA Collaborative Close is a unique, award winning application built using Microsoft Office technologies. It is designed to help organizations ‘close their books’ more quickly, more dependably and more predictably, giving financial professionals more time to analyze and consider data before making crucial decisions.
Uniquely, CODA Collaborative Close recognizes and supports the collaborative processes that underpin period close; other products in this area focus purely on consolidating and reporting the finance figures, not on collaborative processes that are key to collecting and verifying the figures in the first place, and that are traditionally carried out manually. An added benefit is that it only uses IT infrastructure and technology that the customer is very likely to be already using.
Roularta will use CODA Collaborative Close to help manage its monthly financial period closing process. As a diverse group of more than 50 publishing, broadcasting and media companies, Roularta’s finance professionals gather financial information from every part of the group each month in order to produce accurate and timely management financial reports and statutory reporting packs.
Roularta Media Group has standardized on CODA-Financials and CODA e-Finance for financial transaction processing, and is proud to be the first organization to commit to a full-scale implementation of CODA Collaborative Close. However, as with many companies, the financial processes across the group vary due to merger and acquisition activity, and due to the different business models of the companies within the group. This adds complexity to the task of gathering information to close the financial period and makes it impossible to fully automate with conventional systems.
Jean Pierre Dejaeghere, CFO at Roularta Media Group, said: “CODA Collaborative Close will help us to gain visibility and therefore improve the control and auditability of our financial closing process. To date we have had to rely on traditional, manual methods which can be time consuming and which make the process hard to track. CODA Collaborative Close will give us complete visibility of the process from start to finish, and by recording every activity, it will help us understand how to improve our processes. Our aim is to ensure that our accountants spend more time adding value to management and performance information, and less time chasing data.”
Financial period close is a collaborative process of questions and answers, of confirming detailed information, of individuals collaborating to arrive at the answer and generating a picture in numbers of the organization’s current financial situation. Every organization in the world has to address this, and they all have different processes. CODA Collaborative Close uses the latest technologies and features from Microsoft Office 2003, Microsoft Sharepoint Portal Server and Microsoft Office Infopath together with unique task modeling technology from CODA to manage approvals, exception reporting, stock reconciliations, aged debt processes and a string of other potential bottlenecks in the period end closing process.
Tim Tribe ACMA, Head of Product Management at CODA Group, said, “Period end reporting is a challenge for all accounts departments. The challenge gets greater the more distributed the organization is. The use of technology to take the sting from the process, to enable people to collaborate, to progress tasks and to automate postings will finally deliver a true fast period close to business.”
