Consolidated 90+ entities across 19 currencies
Eliminated manual consolidation processes
Delivered trusted financial insights to stakeholders on demand
The Challenge: Managing Manual Financial Consolidation Across More Than 90 Entities
"Having no formal consolidation system meant there were gaps in the processes," Claire explained. "People could go in and edit things after month-end, changing results that you might not necessarily pick up. Anytime somebody moved a file, renamed a file, or didn't use the right abbreviation, it broke everything."
Managing the process became increasingly challenging as OEG continued to acquire businesses. Since Claire joined the company, OEG has added 12 businesses through acquisitions or new company creation, making scalability a growing concern for the finance organisation.
The challenges extended well beyond consolidation, too. The finance team was managing more than 130 Excel files during annual budgeting, while business intelligence teams often worked until one or two o'clock in the morning preparing reports for executive meetings. Producing new management views meant rebuilding complex spreadsheet models, and every reporting request created hours of additional manual work.
"We were very manual when I joined," Claire said. "Consolidating so many entities in Excel was challenging. We didn't have a dedicated system to support the process, so much of it relied on spreadsheets."
Recognising that manual processes could no longer support the organisation's pace of growth, OEG selected Vena for its modern, scalable financial consolidation platform.
The Solution: Transforming Financial Consolidation With A Platform Built for Growth
Today, Vena serves as OEG's central platform for financial consolidation, enabling the finance team to consolidate financial results across more than 90 global entities with significantly greater control, consistency and efficiency.
"The biggest benefit is that we can now consolidate at the touch of a button," Claire said. "We're not spending an hour trying to make sure every file is in the right format before we can even begin."
As OEG continues to acquire companies, adding new entities into Vena has become a simple repeatable process rather than a major finance project. Once financial data is mapped into the required format, the organisation can quickly integrate new businesses into their consolidation and reporting structure, supporting OEG's continued expansion.
Vena has also transformed how the finance team delivers management reporting. Instead of rebuilding complex spreadsheet models every time executives request a different view of the business, the team can quickly reorganise reporting dimensions and generate new insights without disrupting underlying financial data.
"Before, if someone wanted to see the data differently, your heart sank because you knew it was going to be three or four hours' work," Claire said. "Now we can give them that information almost instantly."
OEG's CFO now regularly uses Vena's ad hoc reporting capabilities to answer business questions independently, reducing reliance on the finance team for routine reporting requests. Meanwhile, reporting teams that previously worked into the early hours of the morning preparing executive presentations can now complete reports by the end of the business day using standardised reporting templates and governed data.
The move away from manual consolidation has also strengthened governance by providing standardised reporting, version control and consistent data structures across the organisation. Rather than searching through hundreds of spreadsheet tabs to identify broken formulas or inconsistent data, the finance team now works from a single, controlled platform that provides confidence in every reporting cycle.
OEG has already completed successful budgeting, forecasting and month-end reporting cycles in Vena while laying the foundation for future improvements. Looking ahead, the team plans to expand its use of Vena through additional financial close processes, including fixed asset reporting, before introducing executive dashboards that will provide leadership with even faster access to trusted financial insights.
For what we had before, this is completely different. Being able to consolidate without manually pulling together more than 90 spreadsheets has transformed how we work. As we continue to grow, Vena gives us a platform we can keep building on."
Claire Kerr
FP&A Manager, OEG