sap solution Brief

SAP BusinessObjects

Sector: utilities

Electrabel accelerates intercompany reconciliation to speed up financial closes

proFile

Electrabel, a member of GDF SUEZ Benelux &

Germany, is the biggest energy supplier in the

Benelux region. The company produces and

supplies energy and delivers innovative energy

solutions and personal services to 6 million

consumers and commercial and industrial

customers. Electrabel has a diversified Benelux

production park, with a total capacity of 16,000

MW. It includes facilities that operate with

renewable energy sources as well as

conventional and nuclear power plants.

reQuiremenTs

• Solution to speed up the financial close

• User-friendly tool

• Allow intercompany reconciliation at the

document level

soluTion

SAP BusinessObjects Intercompany

Reconciliation 10.0

BeneFiTs

• Shortens the time to close the books

• Reduced operating costs

• Lower error rate

Quick Facts

The number of transactions between the affiliate companies of

world energy leader GDF Suez is enormous. With so many

intercompany documents to be treated, intercompany

reconciliations have long held up the closing processes at Belgian

energy provider Electrabel, a member of the GDF Suez group. As

long-time user of ERP applications from SAP, Electrabel recently

installed SAP® BusinessObjects™ Intercompany Reconciliation

(ICS) to manage its reconciliation processes. The operational

departments now reconcile intercompany documents daily, at the

document level, thus improving the speed, quality and reliability of

the end-of-month financial close.

“Our closing process has been a challenge for

years,” admitted Nadine Dekeyser, Process

Management FICO. “When in 2010 the GDF

Suez Group decided to drastically reduce its

consolidation process, Electrabel had to review

its entire closing cycle.” An SAP user for fifteen

years already, Electrabel asked its trusted ERP

partner for advice. The SAP Business

Transformation Services analyzed the

processes, identified Electrabel’s needs and

worked out a new approach.

Time-consuming inTercompany

reconciliaTions

“One of the conclusions was that intercompany

reconciliations caused real bottlenecks in our

accounting cycle,” said Dekeyser. “We knew it

was time-consuming to collect the intercom-

pany invoices and postings, check them all,

reconcile intercompany transactions and

correct errors.” SAP recommended installing a

daily instead of a month-end reconciliation

process, moving the responsibility from the

monitor all the data. All the closing team has to

do, at the end of the month, is to look at the

balances and any issues in the closing reports.”

real-Time version oF The TruTh

"Each document is reconciled once and for all,

so that no rework is required in the next closing

period," Dekeyser added. “The central inter-

company reconciliation database ensures that

everyone works with one version of the finan-

cial truth.” Right now, Electrabel is using SAP

ICS to reconcile the documents of 19 organiza-

tions. They hope to increase that number very

soon, reaping even more ROI from their invest-

ment. “Our only difficulty during the implemen-

tation was programming the extraction of

transactional data from the SAP system,"

Nadine Dekeyser concluded. SAP Intercom-

pany Reconciliation 10.0 now includes a stan-

dard extraction package, which makes it really

easy to kick-start process automation and to

accelerate intercompany reconciliations.

access to the developers,” Gouvy recalled.

“They really listened to our needs and resolved

issues quickly. It was a win-win: we could

impact the development, while SAP received

valuable feedback on the product. By the way,

the reactivity of SAP has been excellent in

every phase of the project.”

speedy reconciliaTion

Electrabel has been working with ICS for half a

year now, after exhaustive testing. The familiar

interface made user buy-in easy.

Raeckelboom: “While reconciliation happened

in Excel, in the past, with lots of manual

processing involved, the new tool shortens the

process significantly. Every day, the IS team

uploads all the new intercompany documents

created by the A/R and A/P. Whenever possi-

ble, the documents are reconciled automati-

cally. Only the ones that stay open because

they cause a difference, are processed manu-

ally. The daily reconciliation allows us to easily

closing team to the operating departments

(Accounts Payable (A/P), Accounts Receivable

(A/R)) and implement SAP ICS.

The win-win oF sap’s ramp-up

program

Electrabel assembled a team of SAP users to

evaluate, configure and implement the applica-

tion, along with the Information Services (IS)

team and SAP. Ruben Raeckelboom, team lea-

der Closing and Tax, and Nancy Gouvy, Lead

Process Management FICO, were involved:

“The info session/demo at SAP proved that

SAP ICS is user-friendly and powerful. Moreo-

ver, it belongs to the same suite as our consoli-

dation tool, so it uses the same metadata and

we are familiar with the approach, which made

it easy to configure the tool.” As the 7.5 version

of SAP ICS could not meet the requirements

for document-based reconciliation, SAP invited

Electrabel to participate in the Ramp-Up

Program for the 10.0 upgrade. “We got direct

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“Each document is reconciled once and for all, so that

no rework is required in the next closing period. The cen-

tral intercompany reconciliation database ensures that

everyone works with one version of the financial truth.”

Nadine Dekeyser, Process Management FICO, Electrabel