Neste is a Finnish oil refining, renewable fuel production and marketing company with operations in 14 countries. The company produces all of the most important oil products and is the world’s leading supplier of renewable diesel. Neste has the most extensive service station network in Finland and has a strong presence in the Baltic countries and St. Petersburg region in Russia.

• Revenue in 2018: EUR 14.918 billion
• Markets: Nordics, Baltics, Russia, the Netherlands, Singapore, Bahrain
• Number of employees: 5 000 – 10 000
• ERP system: SAP

“The role of finance is to reduce complexity and increase transparency and process efficiency to be able to support the business in the best possible way”

Urged by the necessity to improve transparency in business processes, especially in OTC and PTP areas, Neste launched an ambitious 5 year project called Beagle. The aim is to migrate all global Neste companies and businesses from Oracle to SAP ERP system. “In finance, we need to be more active, develop co-operation with business teams, and understand the processes more deeply”, says Päivi Iskanius, the Head of Global Financial Services responsible for accounting services in Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payables, Asset Accounting, General Ledger, and Payments to all Neste companies globally.

The logic in Oracle and SAP is totally different. SAP is an integrated system which means an entirely new way of working from the end-to-end process perspective. For finance, this means that “our work is in constant change and we will meet a lot of new challenges”. Migration to a new ERP system requires careful consideration of how to get the best out of the system landscape. The role of finance in this process is to reduce complexity and increase transparency and process efficiency to be able to support the business in the best possible way. The technology plays a significant role in this, hence “solutions like Aico must be in our radar when defining our ways of working”.

“Having both SAP and Oracle running at the same time, it is important to have one stable work environment connected to both systems at the same time. In our case it is Aico, which lets us process journal entries and financial requests without disruptions.”

“At Neste we understood early on that automation is the key and we must re-think our ways of working. Automation allows us to accomplish our aim – to support business by providing more visibility, up-to-date information, and capability to act fast”. “We have implemented Aico journal entry and financial requests solutions. The implementation was first made in Oracle R12 and an SAP integration followed.” This means that despite the differences between these ERP systems and the migration period taking so long, “we are able to continue to process manual journal entries and financial requests without any changes”. Everything is handled in the Aico environment with real-time integration to both Oracle and SAP systems. “Aico allows us to focus more on analysing the data and improving the processes instead of keying in the transactional data. This in turn helps us reach our main goal – to become active partners to business leaders”.

“With Aico journal entry solution, we have solid internal controls with supporting documentation attached and an approval flow with audit trail. Manual postings are not allowed. The financial requests tool is handy for several purposes and it allows us improve internal controls in several areas,- from invoicing requests to manual payment requests and storing of the control evidence. We can also use it in small companies with no SAP implemented. The development is fast if a new requirement comes up.”

“Without Aico, we would need to do much more manual work, scan papers and send them by email. This way of working would be cumbersome, frustrating, and time-consuming. Actually, we would go back in time. We focus on strong internal controls and if all the required steps we now have in the system had to be done manually and evidence archived on paper, it would be crazy.”

“We use Aico financial requests solution for several purposes, such as archiving the balance sheet specifications. In this way it is also used in financial closing. Our auditors and teams are satisfied with the audit trail Aico provides. In an audit, we can easily show the chain of approvals and also the supporting documentation.“

Aico Journals is a software solution designed purposefully for accounting and finance professionals. Our solution eliminates slow, arduous and complex manual work to speed up journal entry management by up to 50%.

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The key benefits of Aico Journals solution are:

Accuracy

Aico guarantees real time validation of journal entry data against business rules in ERP systems, eliminating all the hassle with incorrect values and combinations.

Efficiency

From creation to posting and approving, journals are processed with smart and agile Aico software workflow. Manual and low value tasks are automated allowing accountants to focus on productive and high value tasks.

Speed

By eliminating slow manual tasks, improving workflow in the team and connecting all your ERP systems in real-time, Aico has proven that journal entries can be done up to 50% faster

Control & Auditability

Dashboard overview of all the processes, completed and to-do tasks as well as responsibilities puts you in charge of accounting team in real-time. And drilling into any transaction to review journal supporting documentation ensures your processes are audit ready any time.