Borlas the project on development and deployment of Oracle ERP Cloud and BARS Cloud for "Auchan completed Retail Russia"

2020

Completion of implementation of Oracle ERP Cloud and BARS Cloud

On March 4, 2020 the group "Borlas" announced project completion on development and deployment "cloud" services Oracle ERP Cloud and BARS Cloud for the company Auchan Retail Russia. For March, 2020 a system is put into commercial operation and successfully functions in all legal entities trade of Auchan network.

Since 2017 in the Borlas Group began to develop BARS Cloud - "cloud" the service for financial the reporting conforming to relevant requirements Russian of the legislation in the field of accounting and tax accounting. The first release of the solution was released at the end of 2018 with implementation and start of the created product and Oracle ERP Cloud services in the top three legal entities retailer.

In the second half of 2019 the project team from consultants and developers of the Borlas Group together with the international team of the customer successfully completed the project of transfer of all Russian division Auchan from systems 1C, local accounting modules and Oracle e-Business Suite 11i on cloud solutions of Oracle ERP Cloud and BARS Cloud.

The project of digital transformation of finance turned out large-scale: more than 500 users of Oracle ERP Cloud and BARS Cloud in Auchan Retail Russia monthly process hundreds of thousands of transactions. The solution turned out complex: not only the complete functionality of Oracle ERP Finance Cloud is implemented, but also a large number of integration flows between Oracle ERP Cloud and the local non-financial systems of the company is implemented. "Cloud" service covers legislative and business requirements on financial accounting in Russia by means of BARS Cloud in Oracle PaaS. We note the high level of examination of consultants of the Borlas Group in "cloud" services Oracle and ability to implement complete solutions that allowed to achieve outstanding results in joint works with the international and local commands Auchan, noted Ekaterina Plastinina, the chief accountant Auchan Retail Russia

Digital transformation of accounting and financial services with implementation of uniform business processes in the countries of presence Auchan continues. In the next plans – accumulation of functionality: replication of the solution in other countries of presence of the retailer and the SaaS services expansion of Oracle.

Implementation of Oracle ERP Cloud

On February 10, 2020 it became known that all services Russian Auchan are transferred to the updated cloud Oracle ERP Cloud system. Russia became the pilot country of presence of the international retail network Auchan Retail where the project on digital transformation of financial functions started.

Tatyana Semenikhina, the project director on digital transformation of finance told Auchan about the choice of a cloud ERP system, advantages of the Russian legislation and project deliverables Retail Russia (during the period from December, 2017 to October, 2019), the leader in transformation of finance in Auchan Retail.

According to the representative of the company, the project started at the end of 2017. Began with standardization, unification of business processes between all countries of presence of Auchan Retail company. At this stage all divisions of the company were involved. Cloud services of Oracle ERP Cloud as much as possible were suitable for automation of the updated business processes and also more than other solutions, corresponded to an operational model of management and answered the IT strategy directed to increase in level of centralization.

Further integrators, both global, and local were selected. In Russia the Borlas group became local integrator. By June, 2018 the solution core-model was developed and implemented in Luxembourg, and in January, 2019 in Russia within three small legal entities trial operation of this model began. In July, 2019 all services Russian Auchan, including networks of hypermarkets Auchan and ATAK supermodels were transferred to the updated system. For February, 2020 the project is at a stabilization stage.

Implementation of Oracle ERP Cloud – only the first stage of the program of transformation. In Russia slightly less than 500 users who work with financial modules are connected to a system. The main users are the accountants performing any transactions and other financial transactions. In addition to them, access to a system was got by those who are engaged in validation of expenses and approval of payments and also elimination of discrepancies between the order, acceptance and the invoice. In this process constantly there are any disagreements (at the cost or the number of purchase of materials, services, works) and for their permission the Oracle ERP Cloud tools for purchase management and creditors are used.

It was succeeded to unify and standardize business processes in three functional directions: from the order of an expense before payment (P2P, purchase-to-pay), from creation of an object of sale before receiving money (O2C, order-to-cash), from centralization of all accounting entries before reporting (R2R, record-to-report).

During the project functions of employees changed. In addition to accountants as such, specialists, experts and managers with expanded functions appeared. At the same time to specialists who are engaged in P2P and O2C (upon they work with documents), it is not obligatory to have accounting education. From them skills of the deep analysis of transactions and knowledge of features of accounting which are necessary to become the expert are not required. Orientation of specialists in this directions goes on accurately delivered KPI of business process, such as payment of invoices without delays, timely drawing of accounts and collecting of money.

Oracle ERP Cloud services replaced a complex of the separate systems which were used earlier. It allowed to create the general group chart of accounts and uniform base of accounting transactions for economic events of the company in all countries of presence that will allow to facilitate replication of the solution further.

On the other hand, thanks to green card on digitalization of primary tax files (UPD, UKD, cash documents) Russia considerably advances many European countries, and it already bears fruits: tax statements are given in electronic form, invoices come and are sent in an EDI format why administrative load of business considerably decreases. Though it imposes other requirements to qualification of staff of financial services.

In general the project mentions not only finance or personnel management. It provides serious changes of processes at the level of all company. For example, implementation of virtual office leads to change of personnel management methods.

Accounting deals with a large number of written and voice addresses. And processing of the simplest of them can quite be entrusted any electronic assistants. It can be program robots who are capable to generate response e-mails, or chat-bots processing the entering phone calls^[1].

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