Case AFRY
AFRY takes care of the IFRS 16 reporting for one third of the corporation in a few hours
International designing and consulting company AFRY was born in February 2019 when ÅF, founded in 1895, bought the Finnish Pöyry, founded in 1958. The solutions that AFRY offers respond to global mega trends, such as digitalization in manufacturing, the turning point in energy markets, bioeconomy and urbanization. The assignments vary from individual designing jobs to vast investment projects. AFRY supports its clients from the energy, infrastructure and manufacturing sectors in sustainable development solutions starting from the initial reports and strategic choices all the way to the project and implementation planning as well as support for use and administration.
To learn more about AFRY please visit https://www.afry.com
The most flexible supplier was chosen for the IFRS 16 project
The manager of AFRY’s Financial Service Center, Vilma Forsell, says that the planning for the IFRS 16 project started back in 2018. During the thinking phase the entries were done in Excel, which is not a long-term solution, nor an easy one. The treasury department discovered ZenTreasury at a business event. ”ZenTreasury’s advertisement was brought to the office from the event, and that’s where it all started.”
In the selection phase the company invited tenders from only a few service providers. “We were looking for a small company that would only execute the lease module. ZenTreasury proved to be the most flexible one, and also stood out price-wise. We came to the conclusion that this was something worth investing in”, says Forsell summarising the project.
Co-operation and easy-to-use software as strong points
The examination into whether all source data was at the same place took some time in the beginning of the project. Vilma Forsell says that they were clearly told what was needed, and that the questions were answered immediately. ”We weren’t fully familiar with the new accounting standard, so it was a relief that they were able to express things clearly for us. Everything worked really fast at ZenTreasury’s side and the Excels were taken in at once. We managed to build the environment in such a way that it functioned instantly.”
With the implementation of the software it is no longer necessary to ask the corporation countries to produce calculations. ”Now we can be sure that if there is a mistake somewhere, it is our own mistake, as the software produces the correct numbers. We don’t have the resources to check everything that has been done manually, so the software has given us some peace of mind in this regard as well. We also don’t need as much resources.”
At first there was more communication, but at the moment it takes four employees a few hours a month to take care of the leasing calculations for one third of the corporation. Initially all companies dealt with euros and each contract had its own currency. “After the acquisition the corporate currency is no longer euro. We have decided to expand using ZenTreasury to cover the whole corporation from the beginning of 2021”, reflects Forsell.
Vilma Forsell says that as co-operation has gone forward, there has been much less communication with ZenTreasury. ”By using the software we have learnt to navigate ourselves. We have a team of a few people that monitors the changes and enters them into the system.” She says that it shows in the quality of the co-operation that they are dealing with a small company, as the co-operation is faster, more straightforward and more customer friendly.