Toluna PLC
Case Study: Toluna PLC
Company: Tuluna PLC
Country: Europe w/Worldwide Offices
Business: Online market Reaserch
About The Company
Toluna PLC is Europe’s fastest growing online market research panel and survey technology provider. Toluna offers market researchers access to Europe’s most highly profiled online research panel for sample and online survey scripting projects. With 1.6 million active members covering 20 European and international panels, Toluna has won the support of over 250 of the world’s leading market research and communications agencies. 120 employees work in its offices in London, Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfurt and New York. The company is listed on the London Stock Exchange, and its annual turnover amounted to 12.5 million Euros in 2006.
The Situation
The accounting requirements of international organizations rise with the number of subsidiaries in different countries making standardized and on time reporting one of the major challenges. Vincent Boujnah, CFO at Toluna, explains, “A growing business network also means more complexity. In our case, particularly difficult areas were financial consolidation, multiple currencies and charge accounts. Each of our subsidiaries has its own accountancy, but we needed better tools to avoid duplicate work in some areas, affecting our overall productivity.” Consequently, Toluna was in search for a software environment allowing to connect its offices across Europe and the US and to integrate its accountancy departments. “Supporting a controlled growth was our main decision driver to invest into a flexible and powerful solution. And it is also essential to be able to benefit from local support,” Boujnha says.
EXACT PROVIDING GLOBALLY STANDARDIZED SOFTWARE
“After having carefully evaluated our choices, we finally decided for Exact as its product, Exact Globe, simply provides everything we were looking for,” says Vincent Boujnah. “However, it was not only its functionalities that convinced us. One of the main reasons to go for Exact was the fact that it offers a globally standardized product available in local languages. As an internationally growing company already present on two continents it is important for us that we can count on a product that is globally available; just as it is of vital importance to work with a partner that is internationally established and present all over the world through a large subsidiary network. And it is also key to be able to benefit from local support,” he explains.
INTEGRATED BACK OFFICE SYSTEM AUTOMATING BUSINESS PROCESSES
Exact Globe is Exact’s back office component which is a traditional Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system that integrates all business areas into a single solution and automates business processes across the entire company. The standard architecture of Exact’s solution for accounting allows standardizing and simplifying financial administration throughout all small to medium-sized subsidiaries, resulting in lower administration costs and faster period closing. At the same time, Exact software supports international organizations in meeting local requirements, such as regional taxes and banking needs by providing its solutions in more than 30 legislations.
IMPRESSIVELY SWIFT IMPLEMENTATION IN ALL LOCATIONS
In March 2006 the implementation of Exact Globe for Financials and Accounting started at Toluna’s main office in Paris where the back office component itself is based and to which other offices are connected via client server. Boujnah says, “Exact’s short implementation cycles sounded promising from the very beginning. Ten days of consultancy in France were followed by a couple of consultancy days in the subsidiaries in order to adapt the solution to the local requirements. Altogether, it was easy to implement and quick to set up.” The applied sequential implementation model, part of Exact’s standard implementation methodology ROI5, helped to provide maximum control regarding lead-time and budget during the entire process. The most challenging topic was the recreation of the historical data, which is an issue with any software transition.
Results & Benefits
“The solution turned out to be a very flexible tool which is also easy to use,” Vincent Boujnah appreciates the new software. “Exporting data into Excel or correcting an invoice only takes a couple of seconds. Data operation which is usually huge and frustrating for the company has become really easy in Exact Globe. Even though we experienced a huge growth, we sustain the same level of control of financials and could get rid of duplicate entries what saves not only time but also costs. We already noticed that facilitated accounting processes affect our overall efficiency and productivity, or, in short, our business profitability,” he explains.
Exact Synergy
Despite the numerous benefits Toluna already enjoys since using Exact Globe, the company is determined to further optimize its software environment. Today financial data are still exported into Excel for processing, but this should change in the near future. “ In a next step we consider the implementation of Exact’s front office component Exact Synergy, and to integrate project management, commercial and purchasing management, and financial consolidation into the existing solution – with Exact, we know we can do it,” Boujnah concludes.
