AKF Group gains higher data quality by automating financial consolidation
Improved data quality
BY IMMEDIATE ERROR ELIMINATION
Higher quality
FOR AKF TO COVER
Credit: AKF Holding A/S
The short story
of AKF
The AKF Group is a real estate and investment company that develops and operates commercial and residential properties and invests in Danish production companies.
The AKF Group was founded in 1986 as the limited company AKF Holding A/S. The company was founded by several trade unions and the AKF Foundation. The purpose of the limited company was originally to support the creation, financing, and development of cooperatives. Today, AKF has 55 employees and 45 companies within the corporate group and is an active player in the Danish real estate industry.
Elimination of manual processes and errors increases data quality
When AKF wanted to prepare their annual accounts in-house, they needed a system that could help them with the group consolidation. They decided to take a look at the financial consolidation software Konsolidator.
AKF’s CFO, Anders Lemvig, and Controller, Martin Lyders Larsen, discovered several opportunities with Konsolidator. Among others, they could monitor cash flow, easily create audit documentation, and automate several steps in the reporting process making it much easier to do the financial consolidation.
One of the advantages the financial team at AKF has gained from using Konsolidator is the improved quality of financial reporting. It has also become faster for the financial team at AKF to identify and correct errors in Konsolidator.
“We rely more on our data after implementing Konsolidator. It is also much easier to identify errors because Konsolidator provides you with a full consolidation report for each subgroup,” says Martin Lyders Larsen, Financial Controller at AKF.
AKF gains a faster consolidation process and a higher level of reporting
AKF has also gained a faster consolidation process by using Konsolidator compared to when they used Excel as a consolidation tool. According to CFO Anders Lemvig, the process is twice as fast as before. Before Konsolidator, AKF’s financial team spent a full working day on financial consolidation, and now it only takes a couple of hours. Since the implementation of Konsolidator the number of group companies have gone up from 25 companies to 45 companies, but time spent on consolidation with Konsolidator is almost the same.
By moving from Excel to Konsolidator, AKF has saved time and resources which can be allocated to other crucial accounting activities. For example, AKF used to do intercompany eliminations manually. Now, intercompany eliminations are handled automatically in Konsolidator.
To visualize financial data, AKF uses Konsolidator Konnect – a reporting and visualization add-on for preparing management reports and financial statements. With Konsolidator Konnect, AKF group can extract the necessary data from Konsolidator to create management reports.
“Konsolidator Konnect is one of the best features in Konsolidator. We are able to either work with our data in Excel or visualize it in Microsoft Power BI as part of our reporting package,” explains Martin Lyders Larsen.
Credit: AKF Holding A/S
No software maintenance for akf to cover
Credit: AKF Holding A/S
As a truly cloud-based consolidation software, Konsolidator provides all the maintenance of the product. All updates are run automatically, meaning all users have the latest version of Konsolidator® without having to download, install, or wait for the latest updates.
This saves on costs and increases efficiency and productivity.
AKF has experienced the advantages of using truly cloud-based software like Konsolidator.
“When looking at it from an IT point of view, the cloud solution is amazing. It is a quality to the product that it is based on cloud technology because it means that we do not have to maintain it. We can just reach out to Konsolidator if we need assistance,” says CFO Anders Lemvig.
Operational wise, there have been a limited number of issues. The few times the financial team at AKF has needed support they have been pleased with the fast and efficient service.