How SPM Standardized Financial Reporting for Sixty Companies Across Multiple ERP Systems

About SPM

SPM is a Czech investment group managing a portfolio of dozens of companies across multiple industries, including technology, manufacturing, agriculture, retail, media, and real estate. The group expands through acquisitions. Every newly acquired company brings its own accounting system, chart of accounts, and reporting habits. Once a portfolio exceeds several dozen entities, manual consolidation in Excel is no longer viable, not due to the complexity of the calculations, but because of the time required and how quickly the outputs become outdated.

Initial Situation: Group Reporting for 60 Companies in Excel

• Sixty Files and One Master Consolidation: Financial reporting relied entirely on Excel. Each company maintained its own file, with a consolidated workbook sitting above them. While functional, it consumed a significant portion of the finance team’s capacity.
• Lack of a Single Source of Truth: With 60 individual sources, updates made in subsidiary files did not flow to the master workbook until manually refreshed. This made it impossible to get a fast, accurate picture of the group’s real-time financial position.
• Delayed Decision-Making: Data collection, structural standardization, checks, and consolidation meant reporting occurred in bursts post-closing, making outputs stale by the time they reached management.

Four Accounting Systems and Foreign Regulations

• Diverse Systems: The portfolio operates across Helios, Pohoda, Premier, and standalone Excel setups. Foreign subsidiaries also follow local regulations and local charts of accounts.
• System Unification Was Unrealistic: Standardizing accounting systems across the entire group would have taken years, carried high operational risk, and provided no immediate management benefits.

Planning and Evaluation in Two Separate Worlds

• Time-Consuming Budgeting: Plans were created in Excel, while actuals came from accounting systems into separate sheets. Comparing the two required matching different structures across dozens of companies every month.
• Infrequent Review Cycles: Due to the manual labor involved, performance evaluations took place at longer intervals than group management required.

Dozens of Users with Varying Needs for Detail

• Version Control Issues: Dozens of local managers needed to review company figures. Sharing files via email caused version sprawl, elevated error rates, and poor access control.

The Solution: A Unified Methodology Above Existing Systems

1. Integration with Helios, Pohoda, and Premier Without Data Migration

Symfio connected to the existing accounting systems without disrupting established workflows. Accounting stayed where it was, with Symfio acting as an overlay for reporting and planning.

• Data updates automatically without manual post-closing exports.
• Account mapping to a unified structure was completed once per entity, with new accounts categorized continuously.
• Foreign subsidiaries are mapped to the same methodology as Czech entities, making data comparable across the entire portfolio.

2. Custom Reporting Structure

Because SPM manages businesses across completely unrelated sectors, Symfio built a tailored reporting structure reflecting the group’s specific management logic rather than individual charts of accounts.

3. Financial Planning and Actuals in One Platform

Financial plans created in Excel are uploaded directly to Symfio. Variance analysis runs within the platform against actual data using identical structures for individual entities and the consolidated group.

4. Role-Based Access Control

Access rights mirror the corporate structure: local financial managers access only their respective company data, while group executive leadership maintains full visibility across all entities. Emailing financial reports has been entirely eliminated.

Implementation Process

The implementation took approximately six months across 60 entities, four accounting systems, and multiple foreign subsidiaries, functioning as a phased transformation of financial management rather than a simple software rollout:

• Connected accounting systems and configured automated data updates.
• Designed and tested the custom reporting structure alongside group leadership.
• Onboarded entities incrementally, including foreign subsidiaries.
• Engaged local financial managers and configured role-based access control.
• Imported financial plans and launched automated variance tracking.

Results

The Group CFO no longer spends time reading and manually consolidating dozens of Excel files; real-time performance data is available continuously. Financial managers operate within a single, standardized system, giving the group total control over cash flows across all companies, software platforms, and countries.