At GB&SMITH, analytical assets are at the heart of organizational success. Founded in 2007, the leading French software editor is in full expansion with now 70 employees in 4 countries.
GB&SMITH helps more than 600 companies around the world to solve their BI challenges thanks to its key product: 360Suite. This tool provides BI leaders with innovative solutions to help them leverage BusinessObjects. With the recent acquisition of Kinesis-CI, its alter ego for Tableau, GB&SMITH becomes multi-Bi and ushers in the era of Trusted Analytics. This will ensure a bright future for GB&SMITH!
b.workshop met with Laurent Chrétien (L.C.), Chief Operating Officer and Olivia Christory (O.C.), Chief Financial Officer, to get their feedback on their NetSuite integration project.
Project file :
7 people on the GB&S team
5 consultants on the b.workshop team
Project
remotely
Duration:
4 months
finance and item management module
What were the challenges for GB&S in the ERP/NetSuite project?
L.C.: “We are in the midst of an accelerated growth phase. We have chosen to implement the NetSuite ERP to 1/ produce our consolidated financial statements, and 2/ make a number of critical processes more scalable*, but also derisory. NetSuite allows us to realign our current practices with industry standards. We are eliminating multiple bricks in our information system, and centralizing everything in NetSuite, with clean, unified data. ».
What were the project's particularities?
O.C.: “We were under-equipped, we were almost starting from a blank page, so we questioned our processes at every stage. We used a lot of what was native to NetSuite to guide us, the Bests Practices*”.
L.C.: “We had a real subject on the consolidation of accounts being present in 4 countries (France, Canada, Great Britain and the United States). Before, Olivia and her teams had to manually reprocess subsidiaries’ accounts in foreign currencies. The idea of the implementation was to produce consolidated and compliant accounts more quickly and easily. For example, we integrated the Avalara solution into the NetSuite perimeter, which provides us with tax compliance in the United States. These are small details that allow us to achieve operational efficiency and risk reduction.
What do you think of b.workshop's contribution?
O.C.: “We are very satisfied, we appreciate the availability of your interlocutors and we were always able to solve problems and get answers on good practices, we were guided intelligently to arrive to the go-live”.
L.C.: “b.workshop is very well introduced to the Tech’s accounts, particularly those with operations in the United States. We were able to benefit from b.workshop’s feedback, which was very appreciable.
How do you set up an ERP project in 4 months?
O.C.:” We mobilize teams, we use teams (laughs).
We were lucky to have a mobilized team that believed in the project, that’s the basis I think. It’s also essentially time, there is a schedule that was shared from the start at the end of August, we mostly stuck to it. With hindsight, I think that if we had had more time, I don’t know if it would have been so much better. There’s a moment when you have to get into it and in my opinion, the longer it takes, the more you risk your teams to be running out of breath”.
L.C.: “There is an important component, which is the almost systematic adoption of standards that can be configured and allow different possibilities. We listened a lot to b.workshop’s advice. It’s a position that’s essential because if you come in saying “we’ve always done it this way”, “this is what we want to reproduce”, you’re sure you’ll never make it through the 4 months”.
A Covid impact?
O.C.: “I don’t feel it had more impact than that. We’re all equipped, everyone in our team knows how to use the communication tools”.
L.C.: “I don’t quite agree with you, because there’s still the go-live party that would have been nicer in person (laughs)! Beyond this joke, we only worked with b.workshop face-to-face during the kickoff in Lille. Everything else was done remotely with our teams who are very experienced because they spend a lot of time with Boston, but we noticed that it worked with you as well. Collaborative tools are working at full speed!
How did the SuiteSuccess* methodology and the subdivision of your various issues made it possible to implement the solution you were waiting for?
O.C.: “We wanted to avoid the Everest effect, both a mountain much way too high to reach and in a limited time. We had a strong constraint which was the go live at the beginning of the year to be able to start on the 2021 exercise directly on the ERP. We also had to subdivide, first we started the finance and then we activated the CRM. We had also acquired other functionalities through the NetSuite Core, which we are going to deploy little by little through b.whorkshop’s TMA* b.workshop. If we wanted the full scope on day one, we’re likely to fail.
What are your future challenges?
O.C.:” Issues of growth and scalability. The implementation of NetSuite allows us to focus on analytics in order to produce quality and to be more in touch with the customer.
L.C.: “It’s the same analysis for the financial aspects, the time we spend working on our Excel spreadsheets to calculate our exchange rate differences etc., we will now be able to devote it to analysis and provide faster and more accurate information to all of the company’s managers. We will simply be able to run the company and make the right decisions with the right information we have”.
Do you have anything to add?
L.C.: The implementation of an ERP has a positive impact on the valuation of a company. For the same performance, a non-listed company can see its valuation impacted by a discount of up to 45%. This is due to lower requirements, especially in terms of financial reporting and risk management. I estimate that a serious implementation of an ERP system can reduce this discount by about 20%. So there is a clear benefit for shareholders, whether they are founders, investors or employees with access to capital. GB&S imposes on itself a level of requirements quite similar to those of listed companies, with the publication / financial communication less. Tomorrow is being prepared today.
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Glossary
scalable
Ability of a product to adapt to a change in the order of magnitude of demand. The idea is to maintain functionality and performance in the event of a large increase.
Bests Practices
Here the alignment with the NetSuite standard.
SuiteSuccess
SuiteSuccess is an implementation approach for the NetSuite solution based on pre-configured content, including industry best practices and a batch integration methodology. This approach accelerates value creation while reducing the time to implement your ERP solution. Learn more
TMA
b.workshop offers a TMA (Third Party Application Maintenance) service to help our customers to meet the demand of its customers who wanted to outsource the application maintenance of JD Edwards or NetSuite after a migration or implementation project. Learn more about TMA
