LAMA, the largest retail chain in Tomsk, has automated the accounting of retro bonuses. The implementation of accounting for retro bonuses was developed by the consulting company Odyssey Consulting Group and is part of the Odyssey Retail solution based on the Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 ERP system.
LAMA Group of Companies is the largest retail chain in Tomsk. The chain has 54 stores with a total sales area of ??more than 60,000 m? and includes Apricot and Apricot PLUS supermarkets, LAMA supermarkets and Food City hypermarkets, which are located in the cities of Tomsk and Seversk (Tomskaya region) and serve a total of 70 thousand customers daily.
In the early 2010s. the urgency of the task has increased in the retail network of the LAMA Group of Companies nbsp;automation of accounting for proceeds from non-operating activities of the commercial directorate. Such revenue is made up of retro bonuses, i.e. refunds of certain additional amounts on completed purchase and sale transactions from suppliers, and remuneration for the marketing services provided to the supplier. Non-sales activities are the most important way for retailers to get additional cash flow from suppliers. It reduces the effective cost of goods, which can increase the marginality of the business and / or increase sales by reducing retail prices in the competitive market.
Until 2015, the financial department of LAMA Group conducted calculations retro bonuses based on Microsoft Dynamics AX reports, which were processed manually using spreadsheets. Manual accounting generated a large amount of labor and strengthened the role of the human factor, which led to errors.
“We have more than 1.7 thousand commercial conditions with 5–6 different complex analytics , i.e. over 7,000 control points,” says Liliya Gorbunova, senior financial controller at LAMA Group. “Handling such a manual with the help of spreadsheets is a very complex process. It is very difficult to verify the correctness of these accruals, so it was extremely important for us to reduce the complexity of the process of accounting for retro- bonuses and eliminate the possibility of errors when accounting non-sales activities".
In 2015, the management of LAMA Group decided to hold a tender for external accounting solution. According to the results of the competition, the implementation of the solution for accounting for retro bonuses was entrusted to the consulting company Odyssey Consulting Group.
a solution based on the Microsoft Dynamics AX platform, this is our trusted and trusted partner," says Nikolay Moldovan, CIO at LAMA Group. “We are currently running the latest version of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, so the decision to use this particular platform for calculating retro bonuses is quite justified".
The project was launched in October 2015. Specialists of LAMA Group of Companies » got acquainted with the Odyssey Retail solution based on Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 and formed tasks for automating the maintenance of a reference book of commercial conditions, automating settlements and charges. In April 2016, the project entered the phase of trial operation, in May it is planned to switch to industrial operation of the solution.
"Based on the results of the project, we expect to receive a fully automated process for accounting for retro bonuses and generation of ready-to-execute documents for suppliers”, - says Lilia Gorbunova. — “Our responsible employees, having full analytics on retro bonuses, will receive a comprehensive overview of the sources of additional income, and this will give us the opportunity to increase such income, while remaining in normal relations with suppliers, it will be transparent, understandable and manageable”.
In the perspective of the Civil Code LAMA plans to implement advanced analytics and plan-to-fact analysis of retro bonuses.
outstanding companies able to contribute to our business", - adds Nikolai Moldovan. “We see that Odyssey Consulting Groupis exactly such a company. She is capable of handling complex tasks, helping us grow our IT system and our business".
