How. Tate & Lyle "Makes Food Extraordinary" with Improved. Finance Functions

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1 This article appears here with permission from WIS Publishing. How Tate & Lyle "Makes Food Extraordinary" with Improved Finance Functions Specialty Food Ingredients Provider Serves Up Automated Account Reconciliations by Ken Murphy, Senior Features Editor Tate & Lyle has spent more than 150 years fulfilling its mission of making food extraordinary. Originally founded in the UK in 1859, when Henry Tate established his sugarcane refining business, Tate & Lyle was formed in 1921 following the merger of Henry Tate s business with the refining business of Abram Lyle & Sons. The former competitors were soon producing about half of the sugar consumed in the UK. Today, London-based Tate & Lyle no longer owns any sugar businesses, having transformed itself into a global provider of specialty food ingredients and solutions. It has more than 30 global manufacturing, processing, and distribution facilities worldwide that serve two main business units specialty food ingredients and bulk ingredients that count many of the world s major food, beverage, and industrial companies as their customers.

2 At a Glance Goals: Consolidate account reconciliations in parallel with a migration to a central SAP ERP Financials instance and the establishment of a global shared services office; automate manual and spreadsheetbased disparate processes; and standardize account reconciliation processes Strategy: Integrated SAP ERP with the Account Reconciliations and Task Management applications by BlackLine Outcome: Eliminated manual processes, spreadsheets, and paper-based storage for account reconciliations and documentation, and enhanced visibility and oversight of month-end close processes From innovation to production, SAP is a key partner in Tate & Lyle s stated mission. In 2013, the organization completed a multi-year consolidation of regional SAP systems to a single global instance of SAP ERP. Its two business units share a common IT platform for corporate functions and shared services. Processes that run on SAP ERP help to generate over 90% of the company s revenue. The establishment of a global shared services center in Łódź, Poland, was a key part of Tate & Lyle s consolidation efforts. From this central office, roughly 200 people in the finance department manage and reconcile balance sheets for thousands of general ledger accounts that cover transactions in the Americas as well as locations in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia Pacific. Prior to the Łódź office assuming responsibility for central finance operations, account reconciliations were regional; each office developed, maintained, and managed its own manual processes for reconciling accounts under its purview, including those for localized legal entities. With the establishment of a central finance function, disparate account reconciliation processes would no longer be supported. The shared services and finance teams wanted to improve central oversight and efficiencies, increase visibility and tracking capabilities, and devote less time and resources to administrative tasks. Previously, our reconciliation processes were three-level and paper-based, says Barbara Blaszczyk, Head of Finance Operations at Tate & Lyle. Manual reconciliations were recorded on spreadsheets, with paper signatures and different storage locations depending on the location of the account and team responsible. We wanted to have more control over the processes, and from an operational perspective, make cumbersome processes easier to manage.

3 Increasing control over the reconciliation process would manifest itself in a number of different ways. It would result in more certainty over the precise number of fully reconciled accounts, improved documentation of follow-up action items, better transparency as a result of more consistent reconciliation processes, and less effort required to investigate reconciliation discrepancies. According to Stephen Byers, Group Vice President and CIO at Tate & Lyle, the creation of the shared services group in parallel with the SAP systems consolidation project was the main driver for Tate & Lyle to make a business case for a solution to automate the account reconciliation process. Centralizing financial activities into Łódź and establishing global common methods allowed us to streamline processes further with the use of automated reconciliations he says. A New Recipe for Success The search for an automated account reconciliation tool gained steam about one year after the shared services center in Łódź assumed responsibilities for the central finance function. According to Blaszczyk, the main requirements for an automation solution were that it must offer full integration with SAP and non- SAP accounting systems, reconciliation by category for grouped accounts, standardized templates, electronic approval workflows, the ability to handle multiple currency transactions, basic reporting, and an intuitive, easy-to-use interface. After an exhaustive vendor evaluation and request for proposal (RFP) process that included live demos from multiple vendors, Tate & Lyle decided to purchase the Account Reconciliations and Task Management applications from SAP partner BlackLine, and signed a contract late in The solution was assessed as the most reliable in all the areas that we evaluated, Blaszczyk says. To optimize use of the applications, Tate & Lyle performed the BlackLine implementation in parallel with a significant process simplification, knowing that automating account reconciliation would be far more effective with best-practice definitions in place. According to Blaszczyk, the BlackLine project team s first task was to create a responsibility matrix that listed account preparers and approvers for each account. The team also created a common chart of accounts where possible and categorized account modifications based on an account s purpose. In addition, the team reviewed and updated accepted variances. All this was done in accordance with the Account Reconciliations product, which includes account templates, approval hierarchies, and auto-certification for static accounts. Tate & Lyle Headquarters: London, United Kingdom Industry: Food and beverage Employees: 4,200 Revenue: 2.34 ($3.1 billion) (year to March 31, 2016) Company details: Henry Tate enters the cane sugar refining business in 1859 through a partnership with John Wright, a Liverpool-based sugar refiner When that partnership comes to an end, Henry Tate and his sons Alfred and Edwin open a cane refining business in Liverpool in 1872 Abram Lyle & Sons start melting sugar at Plaistow Refinery in 1883, just 1.5 miles from Henry Tate & Sons refinery in East London In 1921, rivals Henry Tate & Sons and Abram Lyle & Sons merge to form Tate & Lyle Today, Tate & Lyle is a global provider of speciality food ingredients and solutions operating in 30+ locations worldwide, including a network of research centers Food and beverage manufacturers represent over 70% of total sales (LSE: TATE.L) (NASD: TATYY) SAP solutions: SAP ERP (including functionality for sales and distribution, material management, production planning, quality management, warehouse management, financials, controlling, asset accounting, and project systems); SAP BW powered by SAP HANA; SAP CRM; SAP SCM; SAP PLM; SAP Advanced Planning and Optimization; SAP Travel & Expense; SAP Invoice Management by OpenText; SAP Quality Center by HP; SAP Lumira; SAP BusinessObjects solutions; SAP solutions for GRC; SAP Enterprise Portal; and SAP Solution Manager Third-party solution: BlackLine Financial Close Suite for SAP Solutions

4 Centralizing financial activities into Łódz and establishing global common methods allowed us to streamline processes further with the use of automated reconciliation. Stephen Byers, Group Vice President and CIO, Tate & Lyle As we move from manual reconciliations and with better monitoring of month-end close tasks, we have far more time to spend on value-added activities such as analyzing data and preparing additional goals. Barbara Blaszczyk, Head of Finance Operations, Tate & Lyle Process design was an integral part of the BlackLine implementation, Blaszczyk says. Meticulous process redesign helped ensure a seamless loading of SAP ERP Financials data through the BlackLine Connector for SAP, which extracts data from SAP ERP and formats and imports the data directly into the Account Reconciliations product. The project, which began in November 2013, culminated with a February 2014 go-live of the Account Reconciliations application for EMEA accounts. US accounts went live with Accounts Reconciliations in The business went live with Task Management in the EMEA and US locations in (For more information about BlackLine's platform, refer to the sidebar at the end of the article.) Making Reconciliations Extraordinary Starting with the first month-end close after going live with Account Reconciliations, the finance team noticed a significant decrease in the number of administrative tasks formerly devoted to reconciliations. Hunting for documentation or signatures in the form of s, phone calls, or print-outs, and thumbing through files all but disappeared. With a fully electronic approval and sign-off process, we now have the ability to easily review and approve reconciliations from different geographic locations, Blaszczyk says. For auditors, electronic storage and archiving means accounts are at their fingertips whether the account originates from the US, Europe, or the Middle East. And with auto-certification, Tate & Lyle can now auto-certify hundreds of accounts for non-critical reconciliations and for those with routine activity or an unchanging balance. Using BlackLine s out-of-the-box reports, Tate & Lyle is now analyzing the status of partial or incomplete reconciliations to determine the cause and ultimately

5 Inside BlackLine s Platform for Transforming Key Finance and Accounting Processes discover where other efficiency gains can be found. Efficiency has improved tremendously, says Blaszczyk. As a result of the reconciliation process becoming so much more efficient, the quality, completeness, and trust in the accuracy of each reconciliation has gone up significantly. A Checklist for Success Better accuracy is also a reflection of the Task Management application, which facilitates the month-end close process by tracking tasks associated with monthly close consolidation reviews. Task Management automates regularly occurring account activities and automates and stores activities that are attached to regularly scheduled audits. In addition, the application offers the option to standardize month-end close timetables, which Tate & Lyle is using to better meet deadlines; accounts are flagged and users are notified when a deadline approaches. Task Management replaces the use of spreadsheets for the recording and tracking of month-end close tasks. Without automated account reconciliation processes, if a preparer forgot to record a task or entered it in the wrong location, it created additional work at monthend to track down the missing documentation. In the BlackLine application, an account will not be forwarded to the next preparer if a task is incomplete or missing the appropriate attachments or documentation. At the end of any business day, we can see where we are with the month-end close, which tasks are completed, which are outstanding, and the overall progress of the close, Blaszczyk says. This helps open a line of communication between teams to identify whether there are any common challenges or issues with the month-end close that need to be addressed. Not having to chase down documentation or complete other mostly administrative tasks doesn t mean the finance team is looking for things to do. Rather, the team is now actively pursuing more strategic tasks it never had time for before. As we move from manual reconciliations and gain better monitoring of month-end close tasks, we have far more time to spend on value-added activities such as analyzing data and preparing additional reports, says Blaszczyk. But what gives our team members the most satisfaction is the knowledge that they are now more invested in the process. They have started to enjoy preparing reconciliations and tasks not only the technical side of it, but also the outcome of the process and the understanding of the business background behind the accounting transactions. BlackLine s Finance Controls and Automation Platform helps midsize companies and large enterprises improve the accuracy and reliability of their financial reporting, achieve process efficiencies, and improve visibility into their finance and accounting (F&A) operations. The platform enables customers to move beyond outdated processes and point solutions to a Continuous Accounting model. With Continuous Accounting, real-time automation, controls, and period-end tasks are embedded within day-to-day activities, allowing the rigid accounting calendar to more closely mirror the broader business. Delivered through a scalable and highly secure cloud model, and built from a single code base, the BlackLine platform supports many key F&A processes, including financial close, account reconciliations, intercompany accounting, and controls assurance, fueling confidence throughout the entire accounting cycle. Through BlackLine s cloud analytics software, BlackLine Insights, CFOs access real-time data to benchmark, analyze, and improve the efficiency and performance of their F&A organizations using aggregated and anonymized data collected from BlackLine customers. BlackLine s platform is purpose-built to transform and modernize mission-critical F&A processes with enterprise-grade accuracy, automation, and transparency. BlackLine complements existing enterprise systems for corporate performance management; governance, risk, and compliance (GRC); and enterprise resource planning (ERP). One of the select few solutions across all categories and industries to be an SAP-endorsed business solution, the BlackLine Financial Close Suite for SAP Solutions complements the SAP suite of solutions by providing a comprehensive offering for account reconciliations that extends the functionality inherent in SAP ERP. Running alongside SAP software, BlackLine provides clients, such as Tate & Lyle, with unprecedented visibility into account reconciliations, financial close, and other key accounting processes ensuring accuracy in the numbers, minimizing risk, and maximizing efficiencies. For more info, visit