From October 24 to 25, SMART business took part in the Ukrainian CFO Forum 2024. The team joined the event as a partner in the AI-driven IT ecosystem.
For more than twenty years of its history, the event has already become a leading unifying platform for top managers of enterprises in various fields of activity to discuss the latest technologies and practices of financial management.
This year, the forum brought together more than 600 financial leaders. Both days were filled with speeches and discussions with the participation of chief financiers, CEOs, commercial directors – innovators trying to “look beyond” in search of a formula for business sustainability in a dynamic environment.
The top topics discussed were strategies for attracting investment in times of crisis and the role of digital transformation in improving business performance. In particular, much attention was paid to the following issues: how to achieve maximum profitability and marginality and create budgets that can ensure sustainable development.
More than 40 speakers, in the form of presentations and interviews, shared with the participants their own experience in building effective asset and risk management strategies that provided their companies with financial flexibility and formed the basis of a growth strategy.
AI transformation of business – the key to sustainability in a turbulent market
The SMART business team presented a stack of IT solutions, including those based on ML and AI, for the automation and optimization of a number of business processes to guests and participants of the event at its booth.
The company’s experts consulted visitors on how to accelerate the digital transformation of a business to improve its efficiency, introduced them to the capabilities of individual solutions and helped them decide on the choice of systems relevant to the individual business needs of the company.
Artem Stepanov, SMART Decision HUB Product Owner, and Andrii Tonkonoh, Senior AX/FO Consultant at SMART business, presented as speakers at the event. Ruslan Andriichuk, CFO of MTI hi-tech distribution, shared his experience of implementing the Microsoft Dynamics NAV ERP system with the SMART business team.
In his speech, Artem Stepanov told the guests and participants of the forum about the possibility of using artificial intelligence to upgrade the IT ecosystem; about its impact on both the optimization of individual business processes and on increasing the profitability of the business as a whole.
He also suggested figuring out how to calculate the return on investment in AI transformation and shared the key results of a successful case of implementing the SMART Demand Forecast solution for McDonald’s Georgia.
Note that in this project, the team managed to achieve results that exceeded expectations, namely: 83.1% accuracy of sales forecasting for each restaurant based on weekly data aggregation for a period of 4 weeks and 79.1% accuracy of sales forecasting for each restaurant based on weekly data aggregation for a period of 12 weeks.
While at the initial stage of its implementation, both teams agreed that success would be considered achieving forecasting accuracy at the level of 70-80%.
How to integrate plans, forecasts, and budgets into a unified decision-making system
Andrii Tonkonoh explained how Dynamics 365 finance and operations applications (D365FO) can optimize quantitative and financial budgeting by streamlining supply chain planning and demand forecasting.
By integrating tools into a unified system, companies can achieve greater accuracy in demand forecasting and supply chain planning. This leads to acceleration of data processing, enhancing adaptability to market changes and optimizing related business processes.
Andrii shared advice on assessing a business’s readiness to implement a unified management decision-making system, focusing on current business processes, information infrastructure, change management, and staff training.
In the “How Not to Turn a Sprint into a Marathon” section, he provided recommendations for ensuring predictable implementation, maintaining quality control at each stage, and aligning the project with established requirements. These tips are particularly relevant for creating an integrated system for planning, forecasting, and budgeting in a company, as well as for the overall implementation of a new system.
How the accounting system from SMART business became a development driver for MTI hi-tech distribution
We would also like to highlight the speech by Ruslan Andriichuk, financial director of MTI hi-tech distribution, who shared his experience of implementing a modern ERP system Microsoft Dynamics NAV together with SMART business.
It should be noted that ERP plays a key role in processing and integrating data from most of the organization’s processes.
According to Ruslan Andriichuk, before MTI hi-tech distribution decided to replace the ERP system, the company conducted management, accounting and tax accounting in several different software products.
MTI hi-tech distribution is a broad-profile distributor of computer equipment in Ukraine, the managers of which sell thousands of items from dozens of manufacturers every day. And each product line implies its own terms and programs for stimulating sales. In addition, settlements must be conducted in two currencies.
Accordingly, sales managers spent the lion’s share of their working time filling out various documentation, which took away resources from specialists otherwise spent on communicating with clients. In addition, clients did not have the opportunity to independently place an order for goods, which significantly increased the time it took to fulfill orders and reduced the efficiency of sales.
Such accounting, according to Ruslan Andriichuk, did not meet either the company’s strategic goals or the current requirements for doing business. Further expansion of the company and increase in the client base was directly related to the increase in staff, which neutralized the benefits of such steps for the business as a whole.
Having conducted a thorough audit of the situation and reviewed the needs, MTI hi-tech distribution together with SMART business built a single platform based on Microsoft Dynamics NAV. This upgrade made it possible to create orders in real time (both for managers and clients, regardless of their location), check prices and see the balance of goods, track mutual settlements, debts, and view the history of requests and returns.
The company received a “live” constantly updated accounting system. Thanks to this, it was possible to ensure the accuracy and relevance of financial data and their compliance with legal requirements, which simplified the work of the financial department and allowed it to successfully pass internal and external audits repeatedly.
But the most expressive indicators that the company managed to achieve thanks to this implementation are as follows:
- the client base increased by 2.5 times with an increase in staffing by only 30%,
- the ability to switch to a combined work system (office / remote). Today, the company maintains an office designed for the simultaneous work of 60% of employees from the total number of personnel,
- the level of self-shipment of products by clients (without the participation of managers) increased to 45%,
- the exchange of documents with counterparties is 91% electronic
Of course, the company had no doubts about the feasibility of such an upgrade, and its CFO, having assessed the scale of positive changes in the direction he heads, became the ambassador of such a business transformation.
Therefore, in his speech, the speaker shared with colleagues practical experience regarding what parameters are crucial when choosing an ERP system and what is important to pay attention to at the stage of implementing the selected solution in order to obtain the expected result.
How to combine business with pleasure: an intellectual quiz from SMART business
All visitors to the SMART business booth had the opportunity to join an educational quiz about the opportunities opened by artificial intelligence to optimize business processes and accelerate business in general.
The reward for knowledge was books about AI and its role in optimizing business processes, branded umbrellas, bags, and shoppers. However, even those who made mistakes in their answers received incentive gifts.
Finally, at the company’s booth, visitors could simply chat with the team over coffee or grab some popcorn for an evening reading of a new book.
Offline Events 2023-24 – IMG_8812.HEIC – All Documents (sharepoint.com)
Those wishing to improve their knowledge of modern technologies for automating business processes had the opportunity to attend two thematic webinars from the company’s leading experts for free.
Both were created in partnership with the Ukrainian CFO Forum 2024 in early October and posted on the organizer’s official website. Thus, the event participants had the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the solutions in advance and discuss the details with the experts at the forum.
The first webinar – “Automation of SAF-T UA reporting in Business Central” – is designed for financial directors, chief accountants, IT specialists, heads of reporting departments and everyone involved in the processes of preparing and submitting tax reports in a company.
Its main goal is to prepare the business for the implementation of the European reporting standard SAF-T UA and for tax audits in the new conditions.
Let us remind you that the State Tax Service of Ukraine has already developed an XSD scheme for electronic audit, defined the categories of taxpayers subject to SAF-T UA, and is actively working on the implementation of the relevant standard. And the SMART business team is already offering its own SMART SAF-T UA solution so that Ukrainian entrepreneurs are prepared for the upcoming changes.
The second webinar – “The Economic Effect of Document Flow Automation” – shows how document flow automation affects key business performance indicators (KPI) and helps increase the company’s profitability. The authors discussed in detail the criteria for choosing a solution that can become a real business driver and presented the advantages of SMART business DMS.
Here we are talking about halving the time for document approval, reducing operating costs for document flow by up to 40% and reducing the time required to process documents by 60%. And all this – in combination with a high degree of data protection guaranteed by the vendor and ease of use.
Its use will allow you to independently change and customize document management processes without specific programming skills. It is enough to deeply understand which document approval scenario will be most effective for the business processes in which it is built.
You can check this by reviewing the integration case, demonstrating the sequence of actions from creating a payment request to concluding an agreement.
Both webinars are available for viewing by following the links provided.
The SMART business team highly values participation in such events, because it is always an opportunity to familiarize the business with its proposals in more detail and start new partnerships; hear feedback from our clients in an informal atmosphere and learn their expectations. And, of course, exchange experiences and have a chat with colleagues from the IT environment.
We invite everyone who is looking for opportunities to upgrade their own IT ecosystem and did not have time to visit the SMART business booth to order a consultation now. The company’s specialists will consult you and help you choose solutions in accordance with the goals and needs of your business!
Don’t miss your chance to strengthen your own business with modern AI solutions.
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