Société Générale
"Thanks to BusinessObjects Intercompany, we have considerably shortened our reconciliation process and changed our statutory consolidation from a quarterly to a monthly basis. In all, we have saved 10 days in publishing our financial results"
Christina Nicolaides
Head of the Accounting Department for Consolidation and Société Générale Corporate & Investment Banking Subsidiaries
Société Générale Corporate & Investment Banking (SG CIB) is the finance and investment arm of the Société Générale Group. With locations in more than 45 countries in Europe, the Americas, and Asia, SG CIB develops integrated high added-value financial solutions for major companies, financial institutions, and investors.
Challenge
With 92,000 employees and revenue exceeding €16 billion, Groupe Société Générale is the seventh largest French enterprise and one of the leading financial services groups in Europe, based on market capitalization. Business services include retail banking and specialized financial services, asset management, private banking and stockbrokers, and investment banking.
Société Générale faced the triple challenge of improving the quality, speed, and reliability of the company's financial communications. Specifically, in April 2002, Société Générale decided to roll out a monthly accounting consolidation with these goals:
- Improve the quality of financial information sent for quarterly results publication by anticipating the differential processing each month
- Through these new, clear accounting rules (adhering to French GAAP and IFRS), ensure greater reliability in establishing group management results
- Speed up quarterly external financial communication
The project was an ambitious one. For the consolidation department, it involved a significant reduction in exchanges and a better distribution of the workload over time. To achieve this, Société Générale needed to rationalize and automate the reconciliation process for intragroup amounts.
Approach
Faced with these issues, Société Générale decided to seek out a collaborative tool, common to all entities, for the reconciliation of intragroup amounts. This new solution had to:
- Guarantee efficient information sharing and reduce the workload during the monthly closing process
- Enable subsidiaries to enter their declarations in a centralized base and carry out adjustments on the amounts prior to sending them to corporate headquarters
- Integrate multicurrency transaction conversions and handling
Seeking a single application for the entire process, the company looked to Business Objects, an SAP company.
"We needed to optimize and smooth reconciliation between the entities to shorten the time to close our books and be able to switch to a monthly accounting consolidation," says Christina Nicolaides, head of the accounting department for consolidation and Société Générale Corporate & Investment Banking (CIB) subsidiaries.
"BusinessObjects Intercompany enables our entities to exchange information in real-time while retaining a level of control at corporate headquarters."
Results
Société Générale deploys the BusinessObjects™ Intercompany application to 340 users across 798 entities (including subconsolidation sites). Since the solution rolled out in May 2002 at Société Générale CIB, intercompany discrepancies have fallen significantly. Differentials are processed upstream, reducing the consolidation work substantially. Société Générale notes faster applications, on-target schedules and budgets, and the ability of the 798 entities to reconcile their intercompany amounts before declaration to corporate headquarters.
By handing responsibility to the entities, the reconciliation process has been trimmed by 10 days. Nicolaides says, "Thanks to BusinessObjects Intercompany, we have considerably shortened our reconciliation process and changed our statutory consolidation from a quarterly to a monthly basis. In all, we have saved 10 days in publishing our financial results."
In keeping with the company’s goals, the Business Objects solution:
- Optimizes and smoothes the reconciliation of intragroup amounts.
- Allows real-time exchanges while retaining a level of control at corporate headquarters. Through summary views, Société Générale checks overall progress.
- Integrates into the existing environment without requiring the development of entry interfaces.
- Accommodates 116 referenced currencies.
- Delivers uniform and modeled information in a single application (replacing several communication modes that existed previously).
The input work and human error risks are significantly reduced, allowing the teams to spend more time on added-value activities. For Société Générale, total team involvement and user buy-in are just the icing on the cake.
Quick Facts
- Industry:
Financial services - Challenge:
Improve the quality of financial information sent for quarterly results publication
Anticipate the differential processing each month
Make the results more reliable
Speed-up financial communication - Why Business Objects?
Optimize and smooth the reconciliation of intercompany amounts
Enable subsidiaries to exchange in real-time while retaining control at corporate headquarters
Integrate into the existing environment from a technical point of view
Guarantee multicurrency transaction conversions and handling - Business Objects Products and Services:
BusinessObjects Intercompany