Jemena: Finance Process Improvements

A Chart of Accounts (CoA) rationalisation project undertaken by Oxygen for Jemena (formerly known as Alinta), one of Australia's leading energy companies, improved the company's financial reporting processes and allowed it to implement more effective controls around the operation of its General Ledger (GL) accounts using SAP System Landscape Optimisation (SLO) toolset.

Challenge

• Design and define a new Chart of Accounts (COA) in line with current business processes, legal, taxation and statutory reporting requirements
• Reduce the number of GL accounts which had ballooned following an intense period of corporate merger and acquisition activity
• Deliver an improved CoA system so financial reporting and consolidation processes could become less time consuming and labour intensive
• Improve the visibility of current and historic information by removing duplicate GL accounts and put in place a centralised management structure for the CoA

Solution

“Oxygen had a deep understanding of the SAP functional landscape and a clear understanding of our accounting requirement. It was the right combination for the job. Oxygen managed the relationship with SAP and provided superb change management skills throughout the project, which lead to a successful post go-live audit.”

John McCallum, Manager - Finance Improvement, Alinta

• Review the existing CoA; design, defi ne and convert to a new CoA using the SAP System Landscape Optimisation (SLO) data conversion toolkitAddition of extra data to all historical transaction line items which numbered in excess of 15 million lines.
• Reduce the number of number of GL accounts by 75% from 3500 to around 850 and change the GL number format from six digits to five
• Update the existing system interfaces for the new CoA and undertake testing to ensure all integration points between the GL and other SAP modules operated correctly
• Deliver change management regarding the impact of the new CoA and user acceptance solution testing through to sign-off by all Alinta stakeholders

Return on Investment

• Logical account groupings and a reduction in the number of GL accounts has ensured consistency across all Jenema group companies
• The CoA project has ensured the provision of more effective controls around the operation and amendment of GL accounts via a formal and centralised creation process
• Correct disclosure categories allow vastly improved disclosure and financial reporting
• With all transactions appearing to be part of single CoA, visibility of current and historic data has improved helping improve year-on-year comparisons

Oxygen provided design and SAP consulting implementation expertise to convert Alinta’s old state CoA, and also provided change management, conversion and user acceptance testing.

This change has given the company an instant view of historic balances, which matches the current view and has helped the company undertake year-on-year comparisons. It has provided a platform from which Aliinta can move forward with respect to end of month processing, budgeting and forecasting.

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