Building Business With PurposeWe’re driven by a passion for innovation and technology

AubeaEmail: contact@aubea.comOne Bentall Centre, Suite 480505 Burrard StreetVancouver, BC V7X 1M3

INDUSTRYTNG is the largest periodical wholesaler in North America and has the leading marketplace share for reading category product. It operates in 42 states in the continental US, including Hawaii and Puerto Rico and right across Canada.

BY THE NUMBERS:

Revenue: $1bn+

Employees: 6,500+

Major customers include: Kroger, Safeway, Albertson's, AAFES, Target, Publix, Meyer, Food Lion, Loblaws, Shoppers Drug Mart, London Drugs, 7-11, Indigo/ Chapters, BC Ferries, Overwaitea and Metro.

OWNERSHIP:TNG is a proud member of the Jim Pattison Group of Companies. Headquartered in Vancouver BC, Canada and with over 431 locations world-wide, this privately owned company is the third largest in Canada and includes a richly diverse mosaic of successful companies.

TNG CASE STUDYCHALLENGES FACING THE BUSINESS Budget was held in Excel. Consolidating budgets took a team of people a lot of time, it was error prone and slow. Spreadsheets had grown so large the budget model had to be split across many different workbooks. Users would change the structure of budget input workbooks, but also change data without due notification. It was hard to keep track of comments and explanations about the budget. Budget templates with actuals loaded were created manually by hand and took a long time to prepare. This time had to be spent every month to keep them up to date.

New business conditions could only be modelled given considerable lead time. Many such issues were therefore handled by building on the fly spreadsheets which took a lot of time during a very busy period. After the implementation had been scheduled, a major competitor went into liquidation and new business was being added almost daily. Separating the effects of this from the run rate business was key to a successful budget.

COMPANY PROFILE

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WANT TO FIND OUT MORETo learn more about our business planning software and transformative solutions, Email us at contact@aubea.com

Building Business With PurposeWe’re driven by a passion for innovation and technology

AubeaEmail: contact@aubea.comOne Bentall Centre, Suite 480505 Burrard StreetVancouver, BC V7X 1M3

ROI

Finance costs were reduced as a % of revenue. The existing team were able to manage the huge increase in work. Implementation and license costs were paid back by the end of the second year

Inputs and outputs were standardized across the different operating units.

It was easy to train users on how to work with the system. This was important because budget timings are always tight.

Knowledge transfer was effective and simple both from the implementation team initially and then between internal team members. There is no need to rely on a single person who is the only one that understands the system.

SOLUTION

Through a web browser finance users and operational managers were able to input budget data directly into budget sheets and save their results. Changes were immediately consolidated in the total budget.

All changes to the system were tracked showing value before, value after, time of change and person changing it. Notes could be added to budget sheets that flowed right through to the final reports. For central staff budgeted by person, salaries, bonus amounts and benefit plans were input in a sheet that then calculated all of the taxes and benefits accurately and then updated the main model as values were changed.

All new business was captured separately from existing business so that the budget could be analyzed between run rate and new business across all departments and locations.

Actuals were uploaded and autopopulated into the budget sheets. Actuals can now be loaded into sheets and reports the day the period is finalized. Reports available from the system automate the process of showing actuals versus budget for any given location, department or period.

“Our implementation was already in progress when market conditions gave us significant revenue opportunities and a need to grow quickly to absorb the business. Not only did we improve our whole budget process, but we also were able to effectively track the change that was happening, almost daily. Aubea was key in the success of the implementation, and supporting our rollout. - Steven Pang , VP Finance, TNG