Sandvik Mining and Construction Oy is part of Sandvik AB, the Swedish metal and mining industry group founded in 1862 and operating worldwide.

The company is responsible for the maintenance and sale of mining, loading, unloading and well drilling equipment, road maintenance products, drilling equipment and conveyors in Finland.

• Sandvik Mining and Construction Oy revenue in 2019: 981 MEUR
• Aico products in use: Journals
• Countries: Finland
• Amount of journal entries annually: approx. 5200

After years of utilising S21 ERP system, Sandvik was struggling to keep up with performing month-end closing in time and in line with critical compliance guidelines.

Finance was struggling with a highly manual journal entry process interface in an old ERP system. In addition, the company had introduced strict internal control guidelines for finance to follow.

Faced with these challenges, the company was eager to achieve an efficient way of working with commitment to the controls guidelines such as keeping track of audit trail. To transform their processes, Sandvik had to replace their finance ERP system and introduce an efficient and highly functional journal entry management solution.

Journal entry transformation

We have been supporting Sandvik with Aico solutions for over 6 years, and we jumped at the chance to help the company in their transition to Microsoft D365 with the latest Aico Journals software.

“While evaluating vendors, we were looking for a solution, which supports internal controls and efficient way of working.”

Our proposed solution was designed to:

• Save time spent on journal entry management – with a real-time connection from Aico Journals to the new Microsoft D365 ERP system.
• Reduce the amount of manual work – with automation features and email free process workflows.
• Enforce custom control guidelines – with configurable journal value and approval workflows.
• Provide track of audit trail – with easy drill-through access to journal postings, supporting documentation and related user actions.
• Provide journal process visibility – with a real-time dashboard to follow the process on a user, company or group level.

ERP system migration can cause significant disruptions for finance teams. Our aim was to ensure the integrity and access to financial data at all stages of the migration project. As Satu Horko, Finance Manager at Sandvik Mining and Construction, explains: “Aico team made sure the project went smoothly. They immediately addressed the problems identified and provided the necessary support.”

Live access to Microsoft D365 master data

Aico’s connection to ERP systems is always real-time, which significantly increases the efficiency and speed of the work. For example, it takes less than 10 seconds to get general ledger document number back to Aico from the ERP system after posting a journal. This also allows to validate journal data against the ERP system almost instantly – it takes just a few seconds to validate 50-row journal against Microsoft D365 rules.

As Satu puts it:

“Updated balance sheet is available all the time during the closing. Any errors in the dimensions are immediately caught in the AICO validation when transferring the journals to D365.“

Bottleneck-free journal workflow

With Aico, Sandvik was able to meet the segregation of duties requirements. Aico software allows the company to assign a team member to journal creator or approver role easily. Unlike the ERP system, which is typically restricted to the finance department, Aico software also allows business users to create and post journals.

In addition, users can create and post journals before approval. As there are many journal creators and only a few approvers, this workflow functionality allows avoiding unnecessary bottlenecks and speed up the process significantly.