Lion accelerates disclosure management and reduces risk

• Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration

• Food & Beverage

• Business Operation

• System Integration
• Training

Lion, a leading food and beverage company in Australia and New Zealand, aimed to transform its finance function from a business partner to a true value creator for the business. However, the company's current processes were preventing finance from effectively partnering with the business and becoming a value creator. The company's financial reporting process was particularly time-consuming and labour-intensive. The quarterly reports for its parent company, Kirin, contained 42 schedules in separate Microsoft Excel files. The figures had to be manually entered into the spreadsheets, constantly cross-checking to make sure no errors were introduced. During these reporting periods, the six-person group financial reporting team typically had to be supplemented by two additional team members, seconded from other teams. Even with this additional support, the team generally needed to work overtime to get the reports finished on time.

Lion is a leading beverage and food company with a portfolio that includes many of Australia and New Zealand’s favourite brands. Lion’s total direct and indirect contribution to the Australian and New Zealand economies is estimated at more than $5 billion annually. Lion employs close to 7,000 people, predominantly across Australia and New Zealand, as well as in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and the US. Lion’s manufacturing footprint across the Tasman spans more than 40 sites, including large breweries, craft breweries, wineries, distilleries, dairy farms, milk, cheese, yoghurt and juice sites. It also operates venues, and has over 40 Liquor King retail outlets in New Zealand. As part of its balanced business strategy goals, Lion undertook a review of its processes to identify opportunities for improvement.

Lion partnered with IBM Cognos Disclosure Management to get its transformation program off to a winning start. The project team went through a full RFI / RFP process, and evaluated solutions from four vendors in the disclosure management space, which were scored and ranked based on business and IT criteria. The team also decided to work with the BMA Group, an IBM Premier Business Partner that specialises in solutions for the office of finance, on the implementation of the IBM Cognos Disclosure Management solution. Within just six weeks, BMA helped the project team install the software, train the users, and generate the deliverables for the company’s ASIC and board reports. IBM Cognos Disclosure Management uses “tags” to link the final output files directly to the underlying source data. If one of the figures is changed in the source, the output files are updated automatically – eliminating the risk of human error, and dramatically reducing the need to cross-check and validate the data in the final reports.

• The solution went live within six weeks and delivered immediate results.
• The solution provides a full audit trail, so Lion can see who has done what, and how each chapter of a report is progressing.
• The whole reporting process is much more transparent and controlled now.

• Cut 12 days of manual work from each quarterly reporting cycle.
• Eliminated overtime.
• Avoided the need to take on two temporary team members.