The recent London listing of South African Breweries presented the SAB Group with a number of unusual challenges. A full due diligence review of the group worldwide had to be produced in the space of a few months, prior to listing, in order to prepare the Listing Particulars. The system used to collect, consolidate and report financial information was Hyperion Enterprise, supplied locally by Global Technology Business Intelligence.
The design of the application started in August 1998. A restatement of three years` financial results and the interim results for the six months ended 30 September 1998 had to be prepared and converted to comply with UK GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles). This was over and above the normal quarterly management reporting, half-year disclosures and budgeting for the new financial year (all of which are also performed using Hyperion Enterprise).
SAB`s business spans cold beverages and hotel interests in South Africa, with expanding interests in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe. Changes in the company structure added further complications. Information services manager Kerry Strydom points out: "The design had to be sufficiently flexible to mould the existing historic structure and data into its new format. SAB plc is effectively a `new` company, having shed most of its non-core businesses in the last year. With the listing in March, it was essential to have a tried and tested system which we knew we could rely on, in order to achieve accurate information produced in a truly consistent manner for all subsidiaries and divisions in the group."
SAB Group Accounting has been using Hyperion Enterprise for the last three years for its management and statutory financial reporting. The software runs on an Intel-based Windows NT 4 server with a mix of NT 4 Workstation and Windows 95 clients. RSA Beer Division, Plate Glass and Shatterprufe Industries, SAB International and Appletiser SA, in turn, have their own Hyperion licences. Data is summarised at source, then incorporated in the group accounting applications in a group-defined chart of accounts. Hyperion Enterprise has currency translation capabilities which ensure that all offshore entities are automatically restated in a consistent manner. The ability to reverse-engineer existing databases to the new application sped up the design and development phase. Application testing was carried out before the rollout, but no system testing was necessary as the same version of Enterprise that had been used at the March 1998 year-end was used.
"A huge task was taken on with a relatively small staff complement in the finance and information systems areas, so it was essential we use a system we could rely on. Hyperion Enterprise has proven to be such a system. It would have been difficult, if not impossible, to meet the deadline without it."` says Strydom. "In the future we will look to extend the use of Internet connectivity to provide access to the divisional and subsidiary financial data in Hyperion Enterprise."
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