LTA Limited has invested in sophisticated financial consolidation and management reporting software to address the challenges imposed by the diversity of its operations. The solution will also manage the complexity that has resulted from the JSE-listed Group`s expansion beyond the borders of South Africa.
Comshare FDC, supplied locally by SPL, was chosen by LTA because of its flexibility, specialised accounting functionality and ease of use.
"In the past, it was difficult to get a real feel for what was going on in the Group because of the different kinds of software used by our various companies," says Wilhelm Levin, financial manager of LTA Limited. "Some used custom-developed applications, others spreadsheets. We needed to be able to pinpoint problems quickly, and then drill down to analyse them.
"We also needed a solution which would address the variety within the group. LTA has six different divisions, involved in everything from opencast mining and steel manufacturing to electrification and building. The ledger layout necessary for our plant company, for example, is very different to that required by our steel manufacturing companies.
"Consistency was another requirement," he says. "We were using several methods throughout the Group to calculate numbers, and therefore had several different versions."
"FDC has the flexibility to handle the diversity of our operations," says Levin. "It consolidates financial data from multiple locations, and can pull data together from multiple general ledgers and in different data formats.
"It can also work with multiple currencies. In the past, LTA operated only locally, but we now have substantial operations in the rest of Africa and Australia. We will be using FDC to report on all these companies."
Levin points out that LTA is still in the early stages of implementation. "We trust that once fully implemented, the solution will give us the flexibility for our diverse operations, the multi currency benefit and consistency."
He adds that as FDC should reduce reporting times and do away with the need for re-keying of data, LTA is looking to free up the valuable time of its finance people.
"We are implementing the solution ourselves, and have concentrated thus far only on the divisional levels upwards. We will now begin to push the solution down to the operational levels of our business," he says.
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