Success Story: Sage Intacct Kickstarts Process Overhaul for Colmore PS

Sage Intacct drives time savings and data visibility for leading fintech distributor

Colmore PS is an independent private equity/asset technology and services provider established in 2017. Working predominantly with institutional investors, the company has carved out a unique position; its proprietary tech platform and machine learning solution provides clients with real-time access to data and faster information processing for complete visibility of their portfolios.

Key outcomes

• Global consolidation down from three hours to five minutes
• Over six hours a month saved on invoice processing
• Virtually instant AP approval
• Payment run chain time reduced from three hours to one
• Increased visibility of business and management information
• Driving improvements and streamlining processes across the operations team

 

“Sage Intacct had the functionality that we were looking for around consolidations, multi-entity and multi-currency.”

Andy McKeon, Group Financial Controller, Colmore PS

An inherited system

While Colmore PS prides itself on being a market disrupter in the fintech area, thanks to its Helios platform, the company was struggling with some legacy solutions and inherited processes, having been spun out of capital equity company, Capital Dynamics.

“Our old ledger system was very old fashioned,” says Andy McKeon, group financial controller at Colmore PS. “There were a lot of long-winded and fiddly manual processes. And it was very prone to human error, so we needed a way to tighten it up.”
The company evaluated different options before selecting Sage Intacct. Colmore PS needed a simple way to create a centralised financial data repository with increased flexibility. “Sage Intacct had the functionality that we were looking for around consolidations, multi-entity and multi-currency,” says Andy. “And it’s good value for money when compared to other solutions.”

Optimising consolidation

The biggest test of Sage Intacct was when the monthly consolidation was due. Colmore PS comprises four entities based in Switzerland, the UK and the US, all operating in their own currencies. Previously, consolidation was a manual process in Excel. “It was very easy for someone to accidentally put the wrong foreign currency rate in a cell,” recalls Andy.

This complex structure meant that Colmore required some customisation to the functionality of Sage Intacct. Luckily, the solution is flexible enough to be tailored to the specific needs of companies, in this case with regards to tax functionality. “Because we’ve got Swiss VAT as well as UK VAT to record and report,” says Andy, “We were able to tweak the solution a bit with the Sage team to make sure it was suited to our needs.”

With Sage Intacct, consolidation is a one-click process, so what used to take hours is completed in five minutes. This is a huge time saving for the finance team, especially when they subsequently make changes that affect the consolidation. This is especially the case if there is the need for revisions to a consolidation. “Before you had to go and re-consolidate everything,” says Andy. “Now I click a few buttons and the software handles all of the calculations for me.”

No longer having to worry about manually re-consolidating everything has also provided other important benefits aside from saving Andy and his team time. “There has been a significant reduction in the levels of stress associated with our monthly consolidation now we aren’t using spreadsheets,” Andy says with a smile.

The team is also benefitting from time savings with processes other than consolidation, such as payment runs. Implementing Sage Intacct has halved the amount of time it takes on a payment run chain. Previously it used to take around two or three hours to complete Q&A – now it is regularly completed in one.

“We know that Sage will always have new things for us to try out, and we’re looking forward to taking the next step.”
Andy McKeon, Group Financial Controller, Colmore PS

 

Intuitive and effective

Colmore PS has high expectations for Sage Intacct as part of its growing business and has been putting the software through its paces. “It’s very intuitive to use,” says Andy, “so alongside the learning resources and support we get, we’ve been testing it ourselves. We’ve tried out lots of different processes and tried to break it, but it has stood up to everything.”

As Colmore PS continues to grow and establish itself as an innovator in Fintech, Sage Intacct will continue to drive efficiencies, time savings and provide increased visibility.

“For us, the functionality is our number one priority, and Sage has definitely delivered,” says Andy. “We know that Sage will always have new things for us to try out, and we’re looking forward to taking the next step.”

Contact us at Akuna Solutions and explore with a Sage Intacct implementation specialist how to leverage the most modern technology available today to support your organisation’s mission. 

Photo above by Rohit Tandon on Unsplash