The reasons to change

Van Oord is transforming its finance function to become more lean, agile and future-proof to adapt to the constantly changing environment the company is operating in. This will enable them to further intensify the strategic business partnerships of the finance function. One of the workstreams in the finance transformation is related to reporting, where Agium EPM brought their specific knowledge to plan for a realistic roadmap.

From a fragmented landscape to a unified solution

The EPM landscape consisted of Infor MPC for consolidation and the majority of the remaining processes where largely executed in Microsoft Excel, like data processing, project cost control and reporting. Integration between financial accounting, project cost control, project reporting and equipment reporting added complexity to the implementation.

As the environment in which the finance function operates is constantly changing and increasingly disruptive, this resulted in a need for an even stronger business partnership on a strategic level. As part of this companywide Finance Transformation Program, to reengineer the fundamentals and move to a professional, lean, future-proof and agile finance organization, Van Oord selected OneStream as their solution for Consolidation, Forecasting, Planning and Reporting and chose Agium EPM as their implementation partner.

The key to a successful change of systems

There were three key elements to this implementation. The first element is the phased approach. OneStream allows for a full phasing in the build which helps managing the expectations and helps the implementation in following a realistic timeline which we believe is key to a successful implementation and proper expectation management.

The second element is to be aware of the importance to involve and engage people. In the end of the day it is all about people and it is very important to manage expectations, communicate the key decisions with all stakeholders and design hand in hand with the core finance community. Lastly, it is essential to get the base model and key design principles in place first and stick to these principles throughout the full design as well as during the build. This will result in a solid data model and in a unified way of working.

The harvest after a successful project

Currently, Van Oord already achieved significant benefits from having one single data model within one single application. Actuals and forecasting take place in one single process flow which is uniform across all reporting entities. The workflow always delivers van Oord a clear view on the progress of their reporting units during the close cycle. Confirmation rules contribute to the data quality and the extensive audit trail has proven beneficial throughout the data migration and after the go-live.

About Van Oord

Van Oord is a Dutch family-owned company with 150 years of experience as an international marine contractor. They are specialized in dredging, oil & gas infrastructure and offshore wind. They are strongly rooted in the Dutch continuous struggle with water and value innovative and sustainable solutions. The company's annual turnover is around 2 billion euro and they employ approximately 5,000 employees.

On the 25th November 2020 Alex van Groningen hosted a webinar about this project with Albert-Jan Kroezen from Van Oord and Mathijs van der Vlis from Agium EPM.

Watch the webinar

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