A diversified group of successful, long established apparel businesses
The PAS Group is a Private Equity-backed apparel business established in 2004. Since then, they’ve grown to over 20 brands, with product sold via the wholesale channels to major and independent retailers, and its own operated stores across Australia and New Zealand. Since inception, the company has grown through acquisition as well as new store rollout. Today, the company employs over 1,000 people.
Acquisition hangover
Eight acquisitions resulted in six separate General Ledgers, with no common reporting framework, ERP, or IT infrastructure. GL consolidation and reporting was entirely manual on large linked Excel spreadsheets. This was inefficient and error-prone, and there was general lack of confidence in the process and its outputs.
Reporting in the face of rapid growth: PAS’s rapid growth brought complexity. They needed more visibility in group performance, and compliance. There was an urgent need to align management and board reporting with strategy, particularly around retail channel reporting. Even simple analysis was incredibly time-consuming for the Finance team. Changes in planning and reporting requirements were too complex to implement. Financial Controller Milos Kocenda explained:
“Finance staff focused on completing Excel templates instead of on the analysis of the underlying information. There was also no central data store or security around sensitive financial information.”
Why Jedox?
PAS benchmarked Jedox against TM1 and SAP Business Objects. With a one-week Jedox Bootcamp, they proved Jedox gave them immediate results and would grow with the imminent evolution in PAS’s IT environment. Jedox’s retailing experience gave them confidence. Milos noted;
“It was evident from the start that we could establish an effective partnering relationship with Jedox.”
Solutions that endure
“The Bootcamp with Jedox made perfect sense, as it leveraged our existing in-house Business Intelligence knowledge in conjunction with the flexible consultative approach offered by Jedox”,
said Milos. Jedox’s phased approach delivered ‘easy wins’ within short time periods provided PAS with pragmatic and achievable enhancements in store performance reporting.
Low cost with strong ongoing support: Jedox gives PAS a user-focused and unified platform that supports reporting and budgeting processes. Milos points out the benefits of Jedox:
“Jedox is easy to use and delivers all our requirements at less cost, coupled with higher quality, capability and fast response times.”
Efficiency, insights and alignment
Data is loaded once, with role-based security around the information and it is validated using a series of built-in checks. End-users can create self-services and ad-hoc reports easily with a few clicks. This means that they can focus on the insights that the reports deliver. Milos commented:
“We‘re now empowered. We also now have confidence in what we report. Reporting requirements, especially our retail performance reporting, is aligned with business strategy.”
Lasting Benefits
PAS is currently migrating to a single IT platform. As part of this project, PAS is planning to expand the application of Jedox to further analytical and planning purposes, including sales, inventory, merchandise planning, royalty, and FX reporting.
READ THE WHOLE CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY | PAS GROUP
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