GNLD Africa takes charge of multi-country business with Sage ERP X3

GNLD Africa, part of the GNLD International group, has implemented the Sage ERP X3 enterprise software suite to streamline financial processes and reporting. The software gives the organisation better visibility into a business that spans 14 African countries and helps it to produce financial reports faster than it could in the past. Sage ERP X3 business partner, Vizi Consulting, helped to roll out the solution.

GNLD is a global health and wellness company committed to helping people take control of their health, not only physically, but also financially. The company, which runs 14 African territories from a regional head office in-South Africa, faced an urgent need to upgrade its financial systems after years of under-investment in IT.

Its legacy systems had become inflexible and expensive to support. The company needed to recapture data from its old DOS-based financial system into Excel spreadsheets to generate financial reports, a time-consuming and manual process that made it difficult for the finance team to meet reporting deadlines. Producing a stock journal and stock analysis, for example, could take as long as a week.

GNLD Africa decided, for that reason, to upgrade to the Sage ERP X3 system to automate a wide range of back-office processes, including financials, stock management, and bank reconciliations. Having scoured the market for alternatives, GNLD Africa chose Sage ERP X3 as the solution that best matched its price and performance needs, says David Thomas, Financial Director at GNLD Africa.

The company particularly needed a solution that would fit the reporting, legislative and linguistic requirements of its fellow subsidiaries across the French, Portuguese and English-speaking territories under its management.

Sage ERP X3 is a multi-legislation, multilingual and multicurrency platform designed for multinational enterprises. Another key aspect is its ability to sell product based on either a LIFO or FIFO basis, depending on the client.

Another important requirement for the system was that it could be easily integrated with two proprietary front-end systems that GNLD uses worldwide, says Thomas. Sage ERP Africa could also guarantee that the customisations made to Sage ERP X3 to achieve this level of integration would not be affected by any upgrades or patches made to the ERP system in the future.

"We now have a fully-integrated environment that automates many processes we did manually in the past, such as purchase requisitions and bank reconciliations, says Thomas. The system has already reduced turnaround times for financial reports by seven to 10 days, he adds.

"Globalisation is forcing enterprises to keep costs under control and increase efficiency, while boosting productivity," says Keith Fenner, Senior Vice-President of Sales for Sage ERP X3 AAMEA. "Sage ERP X3 gives them instant, real-time access to business-critical data, providing them with maximum control over their operations."

Elsje Swanepoel, CEO at Vizi Consulting, says Sage ERP X3 offers a comprehensive and flexible financial reporting solution, giving users a single version of the truth, helping to end spreadsheet chaos, reducing turnaround times for reports, and improving collaboration.