A Journey Towards a More Digitized and Automated DIS Group Finance An Interview with Kasper Holm Hansen From DIS/CREADIS

We had a conversation with Kaper Holm Hansen, Global Accounting Manager for the DIS/CREADIS Group. Talking about how digitization plays a role, both in- and external, in the company, and why it is crucial to stay updated to beget value-creation. Kasper touches on different collaborations with VOLI where optimizing solutions were created to combat different challenges.

Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

My name is Kasper Holm Hansen. I am Global Accounting Manager in the DIS/CREADIS Group. We are an engineering group with +700 employees, 17 offices in total, spread over 6 countries. Being Global Accounting Manager, means that I am responsible for accounting, tax, VAT, transfer pricing and reporting in our countries. I am Head of the Danish finance department and Head of our foreign financiers, with whom I am in daily contact.

What impact does digitalization have on your company?

Digitalization is of paramount importance to our business. In a world that is constantly changing and constantly becoming more digital, it is crucial for us to keep up with the times – but actually also to be ahead of time. Digitalization is expressed both in solutions we sell to our customers, but also in internal workflows; in our HR, IT and Finance department, where we constantly try to optimize work processes so that our employees do as much value-creating work as possible.

What is your most recent collaboration with VOLI?

We work continuously and on a weekly basis with VOLI. VOLI solves our ongoing support cases globally, which means that all our financiers reach out directly to the VOLI people, who remedy our Maconomy-related problems. In addition, we also work with VOLI on major development tasks in our systems. I will give a few examples of some of the recent tasks we have worked on together with VOLI, during which I will talk about challenges, the solution, the importance and the value creation.

VOLI Data:

- Challenge: We had too many customers and suppliers where our master data was not up to date. We are a large company that does not always have time to check up on this data, so in the hustle and bustle of everyday life, we could well send out an invoice to a customer where the address had changed. In the same way, we could also invoice a customer who may have just gone into bankruptcy proceedings, cf. the CVR register.

- Solution: VOLI Data is an excellent system that helps us ensure that we always have up-to-date data on our customers and suppliers, so we increase the quality of this data. Voli was quick to understand our challenges and suggest this as the solution, which was spot on.

- Meaning/value creation: We have already – after a month of using the system – come a long way and have significantly improved our master data on customers and suppliers.

Acubiz:

- Challenge: We had to implement a new system for handling expenses and mileage.

- Solution: VOLI has been on the sidelines all the way through to ensure that the Maconomy angle was always considered. VOLI has helped us with tests and ensured that the setup is correct before we went live with +700 employees in a new system on 4th of November.

- Meaning/value creation: VOLI has contributed with great knowledge and competencies that have challenged us constructively along the way and ensured a better solution in the end.

Reorganization of our Danish organization:

- Challenge: For an internal restructuring of departments and metrics, we needed VOLI's help to ensure that our Maconomy solution reflected the way we wanted to measure ourselves strategically and financially.

- Solution: VOLI worked hard and dedicated with us to ensure that we reached our goal in time. It was a large project with many hours from both sides, where VOLI was an indispensable partner without which we would never have been able to complete this process.

- Meaning/value creation: VOLI contributed with a constant sense of security and in addition, VOLI also challenged our immediate thoughts, which ultimately contributed positively to a better solution.

Approval of new projects and setting up approval hierarchies based on roles:

- Challenge: We had a burning desire to set up approval hierarchies based on roles in Maconomy, so when an engineer created a new project for a client, a finance professional had to validate the project creation before work could begin. The purpose of this was to reduce the amount of errors we made internally, and which were only discovered at the last minute.

- Solution: VOLI was highly service-minded and quick to understand our needs and drew up a process understanding together with us, to ensure correct understanding. VOLI then suggested how to support our wishes in terms of approval hierarchies from a Maconomy technical perspective. The solution has now been put into production and it has been a really good decision.

- Meaning/value creation: We have greatly reduced the number of errors and at the same time ensured that we have more correct information on our projects, which ultimately saves us a lot of work cleaning up wrong projects.

Would you recommend VOLI to others and if so, what would you say about us?

Although Voli is actually a supplier/consultant, where we pay for their assistance when we need them, I would rather consider them a loyal and dedicated partner. We are extremely pleased with the collaboration with VOLI, which is constantly growing and we see VOLI as an indispensable part of our journey towards a more digitized and automated DIS Group Finance. VOLI is a partner where technical solutions go hand in hand with good customer service and always an attitude of challenging the customer on whether the customer's own proposal also solves the problem. In many cases, this has resulted in even better solutions than we had intended. I can only give VOLI my absolute best recommendations. Extremely great knowledge gathered from some extremely friendly and sympathetic people.

A big thank you to Kasper to sharing his insights!