LOccitane en Provence (Microsoft Dynamics NAV)

The L'Occitane en Provence company is founded in 1976 in France, and since then is one of market leaders of natural cosmetics. In L’Occitane product assortment — the face skin care products and bodies, perfumery and aromas for the house created on the basis of natural ingredients. Today products of the company are presented at the markets of 85 countries. In Russia the L'Occitane retail network works more than in 20 largest cities and continues to extend.

Active development of the company became premises to upgrade of the operating corporate IT infrastructure regarding the organization of procedures of financial and logistic statements. For implementation of this task L’Occitane invited specialists of consulting company Columbus, proved as IT experts in the Russian market of retail and having profound knowledge in the field of international standards and regulations of preparation of financial statements long ago and firmly. The company preferred the solution based on the Microsoft Dynamics NAV platform which is distinguished by flexibility of setup and simplicity of adaptation according to requirements of customers. Selecting this product, management of the Russian representative office of L'Occitane also considered corporate standards of the global company.

The solution on the basis of Microsoft Dynamics NAV was designed to provide better processing and operational information exchange between several accounting systems of the organization. The works performed by specialists of Columbus for the central office L'Occitane in Moscow included implementation, setup and integration of Microsoft Dynamics NAV with the operating accounting systems.

Support of full-function financial accounting, processing of management information and formation of the consolidated statements in strict compliance with the IFRS standards became the main project objectives which are put forward by the customer. Prior to the beginning of the project the corporate management and financial statements at the Russian office L'Occitane were kept in tables of Excel on the basis of the data unloaded from 1C. Then these data were entered manually in a corporate system of SAP. The solution based on Microsoft Dynamics NAV integrated by specialists of Columbus with earlier implemented solution 1C became a key link of this integral workflow, having simplified and having accelerated it. A new system automated labor-consuming routine transactions of manual data processing, including, reduced quantity of the possible errors connected with a human factor.

Upon completion of the project the Russian office L'Occitane received uniform corporate base with the chart of accounts and all accounting entries which are earlier presented in the whole set of tables of Excel. The tools of the analysis and high-quality control of business which are switched on in a system allow to design additional reports on all financial transactions now. In particular, the staff of financial department had opportunities for the detailed analysis of current expenses on all divisions of the Russian representative office that before implementation of Microsoft Dynamics NAV to perform was very difficult and costly. By the way, the new solution on divisions is very convenient for allocation of costs in use, data are provided visually – setup of the corresponding module of management in Microsoft Dynamics NAV allowed to systematize costs by the set parameters, having guaranteed transparency of their structure.

As other pluses of implementation of Microsoft Dynamics NAV for accounting and a reporting preparation representatives of L'Occitane note its big reliability as the data warehouse. Besides, financial specialists of the company estimated simplicity and ease of automatic calculation of the implemented and unrealized exchange differences which before implementation of Microsoft Dynamics NAV was conducted in several Excel cards by each type of the currency clause, slowing down procedures of consolidation and data analysis.

Thanks to implementation of Microsoft Dynamics NAV the company could not only reduce significantly temporary and labor costs by preparation of consolidated financial statements, but also provide its maximum reliability, transparency and, as a result, the increased compliance to the principles of IFRS.