Making financial reporting count: Implementing Tagetik at the Oilinvest group
Excellent financial reporting enables Oilinvest to make better strategic decisions, and operate with more impact. We’re talking to Mr. Ilja Ansink, senior account projects at Oilinvest in The Hague, about the move towards a new reporting system, collaborating with affiliates and what will happen next.
Mr. Ansink: “In my role of senior accountant projects, I’m responsible for implementing the new financial reporting system. It’s more important than ever to work closely with our affiliates – they have a vast amount of knowledge and experience. With the new reporting system, Tagetik, we’re using that knowledge in our decision making, on a strategic level.”
The new system will be implemented in two steps. The first step is using Tagetik for all legal reporting. The second step is using it to generate in-depth management information. Mr. Ansink: “Everything that’s necessary to do legal reporting has been completed in june 2019, I’m proud to say. Next up is step two, which we hope to complete in 2020.”
The new software was selected with great care, explains Mr. Ansink. “We selected Tagetik from a number of competing systems. What matters to us is that it offers a really user friendly, modern way to work with financial data.” He adds, jokingly: “And it has the Excel look and feel, which controllers love!”
Mr. Ansink: “The biggest challenge in this project was creating a system that truly helps our affiliates, making their job easier and more efficient. It helps that Tagetik is user friendly, you don’t have to be an SAP expert. Together with Niels, from our implementation partner Finext, I visited every office to introduce Tagetik and find out the needs of our affiliates.”
Once they saw the versatility of the application, and what it would bring the group as a whole, they were universally enthusiastic..
Each affiliate has a customised interface between their local accounting system and Tagetik. This lets controllers report data in their own preferred way. Mr. Ansink: “Once the data is in Tagetik, we at head quarters can query all the data and generate in-depth reports. There’s a great flexibility there, without having to ask affiliates for every little detail!”
The new vision, backed by the new software, means a big leap for Oilinvest’s financial reporting. With it, the group is operating at the forefront of the industry. Mr. Ansink: “And I believe that’s exactly where we need to be!”