The Jim Pattison Group managed 150 separate entities within Microsoft Dynamics GP, resulting in a hefty workload that required manually adjusting and reconciling intercompany transactions.
In 1961, Jim Pattison purchased a single Vancouver-based car dealership struggling to make ends meet. Fast forward to today, he has acquired over 200 companies and built a massive conglomerate. The Jim Pattison Group is Canada’s second largest privately held company, with more than 45,000 employees around the globe. The company is active in 25 divisions, including automotive, media, food, packaging, and forestry products.
The Jim Pattison Group managed 150 separate entities within Microsoft Dynamics GP, resulting in a hefty workload that required manually adjusting and reconciling intercompany transactions. The accounting team lost many valuable hours cleaning data and lacked granular visibility into their cashflow. They were already considering migrating to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (D365 BC) and required an integrated solution to consolidate data across all 150 subsidiaries and streamline intercompany transactions.
“Before MEM, whenever we had to do backups or version upgrades, we had to do it 150 times. It was a painful process.”
— Stephen Kai, Director of Finance at Jim Pattison Group
Storing information across 150 separate databases led to data silos that demanded labour-intensive data preparation and maintenance to be usable for reporting.
With transactions creating intense manual workloads, the system was prone to errors. Data cleaning added an extra layer of complexity, consuming multiple working hours.
Routine intercompany transactions took up a tremendous amount of time because they needed to be coordinated between accounting teams.
Decentralized cash-in and cash-out processes decreased control and limited what insights could be attained from multi-entity data analysis.
The Jim Pattison Group was already familiar with the Dynamics product-line and knew that they needed an intercompany solution that integrated fully with D365 BC.
An implementation partner helped The Jim Pattison Group identify Binary Stream’s Multi-Entity Management (MEM) as an innovative solution that would allow them to do more with less.
Automation of many manual processes means that intercompany transactions and journal entries now occur quickly and effectively.
The team no longer struggles with balancing a workload full of mundane, manual processes. They can focus on budgeting and strategic planning.
“You just log into one database and can do pretty much everything. That’s resulted in massive time savings.”
— Stephen Kai, Director of Finance at Jim Pattison Group
By consolidating financial data into a central source, separate entities no longer need to coordinate information to perform routine transactions. With streamlined workflows, they can embrace an agile mindset.
Improved control and visibility over cashflow enable the team to spend less time collecting data and more time zooming out to focus on the big picture.
Leadership can now access reliable and timely reports with granular data analysis to facilitate faster strategic decisions and improve forecasting.
Binary Stream provided comprehensive support at every stage of the journey. From customization to implementation and training, there was always someone on hand to answer any questions.
