Flexible consolidation at Mourik

Flexible consolidation at Mourik

"Our goal is to standardize the financial processes more and thus make them more manageable," says Gerald Rietveld, financial controller at Mourik. The family-owned company is a broad-based project organization with 2,000 employees worldwide. Previously, the construction organization used Excel to consolidate its 80 entities. "Adjustments required a lot of work, so we only did a full but minimal consolidation once a year," says Auke Droogh, controller at Mourik.

"Is reporting so important that you are allowed to change the salary payment for that?"

Per month and per 4 weeks

Despite standardization, the family business wants flexibility in the internal processes within the entities. At first glance, a contradictory desire, but one that fits well with the wishes of the business. "The majority of our entities work with a period closure of 4 weeks, while our foreign entities and some Dutch entities work with a monthly closure," explains Auke. "It is therefore a conscious choice not to bring everything to 4 weeks. Traditionally, like many construction companies, we work with 4-weekly reporting periods. This overlaps with salary payments. In addition, the international companies and a number of acquired companies report on a monthly basis, which in these companies corresponds to the payment of salaries. A logical choice, because salaries are the biggest expense in our industry. Then you have to weigh up whether reporting is so important that you can change the salary payment for that."
This choice also means that no full consolidation with intercompany matching can be made throughout the year. Auke: "We have excellent insight into the figures this way. Before this we did not have a consolidated balance sheet per period, so we have already made a lot of progress."

User convenience in the cloud

To facilitate the consolidation processes, Mourik chooses Tagetik. "We found the ease of use particularly important. Our users are used to Excel, with Tagetik it stays close to that," says Auke. "Tagetik is user-friendly, but it fits well with the requirements," says Benno van Ingen. Benno supervised the selection process and the implementation of the consolidation solution from Finext.
During the selection process, Mourik mainly looks at cloud solutions. Auke: "As a company, our philosophy is to outsource as many systems as possible. This has to do with control: the computing capacity of all systems is constantly increasing, which means that with in-house hardware you have to add extra servers every year. In addition, we are moving to a 24-hour society, in which organizations run 24/7. To manage that, you have to employ a lot of people. In the cloud, you can share this with others, making it much cheaper."

Tagetik with a FIT Template

For the implementation, the Fast Implementation Template (FIT) template is used. This template with best practices was developed by Finext based on its experiences at other organizations and speeds up the implementation of Tagetik. "Using the FIT template allowed us to move relatively quickly," says Gerald. "We had an initial data model in place pretty quickly with all the schedules and reports," Benno says.
Transferring the historical data proved more difficult. "The data here did not come from another consolidation system, but from Excel. As a result, a lot was missing, " Benno continues. "Before, the data was not unambiguous and entities used different accounts," Auke agrees. "We also had to think about all those kinds of things. That did make it more uniform."

"Periodically we are more concerned with the balance sheet, so it takes less energy at the end of the year."

Liquidity forecast

In addition to the FIT template, a liquidity forecast was built. "We started with a forecast of once every 4 weeks, then we went to once a week," says Auke, "I think that's one of the advantages of the system: it's very flexible." Incidentally, the liquidity forecast also considers the effort required from the business. "The liquidity forecast does not concern the entire consolidation circle, but is only delivered by the 15 most important companies. That is where it is relevant," says Niels Sterkenburg of Finext.

No big bang

Taking users into account is typical of the project. Benno: "The idea was not to do a big bang, but to slowly grow toward full delivery." "Because we came from Excel, we were not yet used to working in one structure. So you can't expect to be able to do that all at once," Auke explains. "We individually took the users by the hand: 'this is the dashboard, here you can fill it in.' Then you see that most people can do it themselves, actually it's very simple."
The implementation of CDM, Tagetik's Disclosure Management solution, is going to help with this even further. "From the source in Tagetik, you connect directly to Word," Niels explains. "There is one version that multiple people can work in at the same time, which brings even more standardization to the reporting process."

Faster and better insight with Tagetik

Mourik is positive about the results of the new consolidation solution. Auke: "We have achieved standardization by using Tagetik, with better insight and faster closure. That used to take 4 to 5 months, now it's faster." "Periodically we are more engaged with the balance sheet, so this takes less energy at the end of the year," says Gerald. "The next step is to take a stab at analyzing."
Auke and Gerald are also positive about Finext. Auke: "I still knew Finext from my previous employer. I like the way they work; no army of consultants and directors, but a pragmatic approach to work together."