Customer Story
Bloch International was spending too much time manually tracking through multiple spreadsheet copies to correct errors, which affected both consolidation and reporting efficiency.
From its humble beginnings in a tiny workshop in Sydney, Bloch International has grown to be one of the world’s top designers and manufacturers of dance shoes and dance apparel. For over 90 years, Bloch has built a reputation in delivering high quality footwear to the most renowned ballet companies worldwide.
Lucanet makes such a big difference to my life and my company's life, the CFO's life. It's far easier, and far more efficient. There's no reason why you shouldn't be using it.
Andrew Philippou
Group Financial Controller
Bloch International relied on Excel for reporting and consolidation, a slow and error-prone process. Manually combing through multiple spreadsheet copies to ensure data accuracy consumed significant time, especially with numerous stakeholders of varying proficiency levels accessing the data, leading to frequent mistakes and confusion over figures.
Last year, with $56 million in revenue, the company faced the challenge of aligning data from its global subsidiaries, each using different systems and processes. Managing intercompany accounts payable and receivable across these subsidiaries involved handling vast amounts of data. Previously, team members across different continents spent excessive time copying and pasting values and formulas into Excel, a method prone to human error due to time constraints. It was clear that Bloch required a specialized solution in order to streamline their process.
Bloch now use Lucanet for all their consolidation needs. Now, using Lucanet’s software, Bloch is able to process their consolidation more consistently and effectively, aligning with their success metrics/ KPIs.
“The intercompany reconciliation process is now more efficient,” says Andrew Philippou, Group Financial Controller at Bloch International. “Any errors can be fixed quickly as Lucanet has useful features like the semi-automatic removal which I use for intercompany revenue and profit.”
Lucanet's process for intercompany reconciliation has proved to be a game changer for Bloch; it’s now fast and easy to use, and almost feels automatic. Company revenue, cost of sales, and all of the consolidation entries have become a lot simpler, a lot more efficient, and almost zero errors. “Any errors are input,” states Philippou, “Input is at fault.”
Bloch can also tailor reports and design them specifically around the company’s needs, such as creating unrealized profit reports, or reports comparing salaries per area with the number of people in each area. Lucanet’s reporting process allows Bloch’s financial directors worldwide to see and compare their performance.
Bloch has benefited from Lucanet’s hands-on assistance with software integration and training. “The user interface is simple to navigate – you can find the income statement, balance sheet, cash flow, from the dashboard. But if you need to dig further or make advanced amendments or create new reports, you can do it with ease.”
The key Lucanet features that have had a great impact on reporting have been the primary reconciliations, the unrealised profit calculations, and the automatic removal of intercompany revenue and cost of sales.
Bloch currently has an ERP which is DOS based for their Asia content, and they are very dissatisfied with their LP (limited partnership), as it can't integrate properly because it is so outdated. Bloch is working on remedying the situation with Lucanet's group reporting module, in an effort to put their days using Excel well and truly behind them.
Since Bloch implemented Lucanet, both intercompany reconciliation and reporting has become a lot more efficient and a lot less error prone. If errors occur, users can fix them quickly. Team members can compare budgets year-on-year with a simple click. And, if there are any wrong allocations, users are able to map it and make adjustments as they go.