The solution, developed by specialists of the Odyssey Consulting Group consulting company, manages the collection and approval of applications for payment by the Apostol company, allowing you to control the execution of budgets in real time.
The Russian media holding "Apostol" provides a full range of services in the field of TV and video production and marketing communications. The company was established in 2008. The holding gained wide popularity thanks to the TV programs “Unreal Politics”, “Infomania”, “Moscow 24/7”, “The Right Choice”, “Russia in Figures”, Internet TV POST TV and the social network Face.ru. Currently, Apostol cooperates with the brands Yota, Oriflame, Gosloto, Anji Football Club, and also implements the educational project of Tina Kandelaki "Smart School".
As the "Apostol" strengthened its position in the Russian market, ;increasing the number of projects and volumes of work, the volumes of financial transactions also increased in the company. Prior to the introduction of the Odyssey RSys system, requests for payments of the holding were processed by employees only in paper form, and budgets were kept in Excel spreadsheets. Filling out applications manually was accompanied by a lot of errors. Under such conditions, the control of payments and the analysis of the execution of the adopted budgets became more and more difficult. Efficiency and quality of control procedures also left much to be desired, not to mention accuracy of cash flow planning. The duration of the approval & nbsp; of payment applications often affected the terms of payment, which complicated the work & nbsp; with partners. And in 2011, Apostol began looking for a suitable automated solution.
Based on the analysis of several system options, the holding's management gave preference to the development of the consulting company Odyssey Consulting Group. With the help of the Odyssey RSys solution, Apostol managed to speed up the process of approval and control of payments, reduce the amount of paper documentation, and eliminate the problem of duplication and loss of information during the approval of applications. The Odyssey RSys solution has become an indispensable tool for Apostol to improve management expenses and budget execution.
The project took place in August 2011, and the integrator's specialists needed only two working weeks to successfully complete it. At the first stage, the Odyssey Consulting Group team created a system prototype that fully meets the specifics of the holding's work. It took about a week to deploy, configure and launch the solution into commercial operation. Key users were trained at the final stage of implementation.
The friendly, intuitive interface of Odyssey RSys ensured a quick and painless transition of personnel to the new system. From now on, all approval processes, Approval and execution of applications for payments of Apostol media holding are conducted in Odyssey RSys.
“Just think about it: during the year of using the system, we processed over 12,000 payment applications, which is about 45 applications per day. Thanks to Odyssey RSys, we have greatly simplified the process and reduced the approval time for each of such application. If earlier it took up to 5 days to agree on one payment, then now this procedure takes a matter of minutes”, emphasize in the “Apostle”. “The Odyssey RSys solution has increased the financial literacy of the staff. Now employees have accurate information about the cost structure for their projects, and the company as a whole has established a clear control of cash flows and can timely prevent budget overruns”.
For each department of the media holding, whether it be project teams, HR, AXO or the financial department, there are separate templates and routes for approving applications. In total, the Odyssey Consulting Group solution uses 12 types of requests - according to the number of departments. The roles and responsibilities of the company's employees in the payment management process are clearly delineated, the right to create and approve an employee's application corresponds to a certain role in the template. Depending on the role of the requester in the company, there are limits on the types of payments that the requester can request. That is, for example, employees nbsp;of the marketing department do not issue an application for administrative and economic expenses.
Information for creating applications: name of the department, project type, budget item, payment currency, payment method - is loaded from the system directories. Each application is assigned its own number, date and time of creation, which simplifies tracking the progress of approval and payment. Odyssey RSys allows you to set an unlimited number of routes and approval levels depending on the type of expense. At each moment of time, the initiator can see at what stage of approval the application is: who has already approved it, what remarks and comments have been given. If necessary, the payment initiator can reject or correct application data and send it for re-approval.
Control over the use of budgetary funds is carried out on the basis of budget limits approved for each unit and project of the Apostol company. The amount of the application for each cost item for the current budget period is compared with the amount of the balance of the limit, taking into account payments already made and applications currently under approval. The amount of the application in the currency of payment is automatically converted to the amount in the budget currency at the exchange rate of the Central Bank on the date of approval of the application.
During implementation, the project team combined the Odyssey RSys solution with budgets were kept in tabular forms. The integration mechanisms built into Odyssey RSys allow you to automatically update the data of budget limits, directories of departments and budget items.
The simplicity and flexibility of the Columbus RSys architecture made it possible to combine the solution with the report visualization module, and now all the necessary data is displayed in a graphical form, which further speeds up the work of departments in terms of payment control. On the basis of approved applications , the holding's employees can generate reports on the movement of funds , as well as conduct a plan-fact analysis for the required period. Currently "Apostol" is completing the transition to an automated system budgeting.
