Flughafen Zürich AG cuts the financial consolidation time in half
50%
Time saved on financial consolidation
3-5 days
Gained each quarter
The short story of
Flughafen Zürich AG
Since 2000 Flughafen Zürich AG has operated Zurich Airport as a private listed company on behalf of the Swiss Confederation. In August 2019, over 3 million passengers passed through Zurich Airport on their way to new adventures all over the world. Flughafen Zürich AG currently consists of 14 group companies in Switzerland, Latin America, and Asia and plans on growing further.
Rapid growth pushes Flughafen Zürich AG towards a digital financial consolidation solution
Flughafen Zürich AG got a more complex group structure in 2017 due to a new airport concession in Brazil and an increase of its shareholding in its subsidiaries in Chile. As a result, the financial department was looking for a tool to help digitalize and automatize its consolidation process to achieve a simpler workflow. Flughafen Zürich AG chose to move away from an outdated, manual consolidation process in Excel and upgrade to Konsolidator® to optimize their work process.
Before converting to Konsolidator®, financial consolidation was a time-consuming task for Accounting Manager Oliver Gfeller because it required an inordinate amount of time on checking up on changes and figures, asking subsidiaries about certain numbers, and correcting errors.
Transparency is the key to save time and increase effiency
Oliver Gfeller explains that one of the reasons his team can save time and increase efficiency is due to the transparency that comes from using Konsolidator. According to Oliver Gfeller, it was hard for his team to find out what was behind a certain figure before with Excel, and they had to ask their subsidiaries for a lot of additional information. Now, his team can easily reference the uploaded files and reports in Konsolidator® to see exactly what is behind the figures of a local company.
With Konsolidator®, Oliver Gfeller and his team use less time checking in with their foreign subsidiaries on the accuracy of their figures. The team is now able to devote more time to other needed tasks and can focus more on these instead of the report preparation.
“We have regained 3-5 working days at every quarter in our preparation process of the reports.” – Oliver Gfeller.
Increased transparency between foreign subsidiaries also minimizes the number of errors in the team’s reports. With Konsolidator® the errors are easier to spot than ever. Oliver Gfeller explains that if he and his team have figures which are changing during the reporting then it is quite easy to update the report with Konsolidator Konnect.
Flughafen Zürich AG is not only using the cloud-based financial consolidation software – Konsolidator® – they are also using Konsolidator Konnect, which is the presentation tool developed by Konsolidator. While any presentation tool can be used with Konsolidator®, Flughafen Zürich AG has chosen to use Konsolidator Konnect.
“Konsolidator Konnect is a huge advantage for me. It is very easy to update changes of the figures. If you have changes you just go into Konnect, push a button, and then it is automatically updated.” – Oliver Gfeller
Credit: © Flughafen Zürich AG
A quick and simple implementation
Credit: © Flughafen Zürich AG
Because of Flughafen Zürich AG’s complex group structure, Oliver Gfeller and his team were anxious about the amount of time needed to adopt and implement a new tool in their work process.
The team was especially concerned about how to implement it at the group’s Latin-American subsidiaries, but it turned out that there was no need for concerns. In the end, the implementation went smoothly, and it did not take long before the finance department was ready to go live and use Konsolidator®.
After a quick and smooth implementation, Oliver Gfeller and his team have achieved what they set out to do: They found a digital financial consolidation tool that makes their entire financial consolidation and reporting processes easier and more efficient. With 50 percent of the work time saved on the financial consolidation process, Oliver Gfeller and his team can now use that time on deeper analysis of the financial figures.
“I am quite satisfied with the tool. It has helped me a lot to make the process more efficient. The whole process is more transparent now, and I need less additional information from our subsidiaries about the individual numbers in our accounting.” – Oliver Gfeller