The Process
When it came to the point that Hoffmann felt they could “nearly do this in Excel just as good”, the team put out feelers for alternative software solutions. A colleague came across Trullion and explains that “the AI function really caught our eye…It saves so much time when you’re going through a 70 or 80-page property lease contract just to pluck out a few key details that you need for accounting. That really helps so much and when we initially did the demo with one of our contracts we immediately thought, oh, OK, this is really cool.”
In addition to the AI-powered data extraction, Hoffmann and his team were impressed by the simplicity and overall look of the platform itself. “There weren’t like a million different reports to run, million different pages to go through. It was quite simple and I suppose quite common sense…and we found it to be really user-friendly. So that was definitely a good selling point there too.”
The Solution
Improving Efficiency
When upgrading from their previous software provider to Trullion, the main goal was to improve efficiency. Hoffmann explains, “we really wanted to cut down a lot of that processing time, manual intervention, things like that. The basis was if you can do it just as efficiently in Excel, don’t go for it really, which is a pretty low bar to set. But from our previous experience, we did want to make sure that was the case.”
Since implementing Trullion, Hoffmann estimates that the team has reduced their time spent on reporting by 25%.
One of the features that has significantly improved time and efficiency is the lease catch-up option. As the accounting team works with procurement as well as global organizations, “the passing of information can be a little bit slow at times. So we may not get notified of a new lease contract or a termination or modification in the month that it actually happens.”
Hoffmann explains: “The lease catch-up option has been quite a relief for us because previously we would have had to manually process through any of these sorts of adjustments.”
Reporting and Audit Functionalities
Another criteria when upgrading softwares was around reporting and audit. “With the previous software that we had, there were quite a few inefficiencies where we had to run reports twice, then sort of combine them into one to give a complete overview of the leases. This sort of ties back into efficiency as we didn’t want to have to go through the system reports and then reconcile them back to the general ledger. So we wanted to make sure it was pretty audit-friendly, which was a big tick for that one.”
Having the reporting align with the actual general ledger movements has proven to be very audit-friendly for Hoffmann. “We don’t really have to go and sit here and explain differences between reports to the general ledger and things like that.”
Additionally, Bradken gives their auditor access to the Trullion platform. “If they want to look at a contract, they can go in and help themselves rather than us having to pluck out contracts. Even just showing them how the schedules are built, the accounting entries and things like that – they can know how to look themselves. Then if they’ve got any questions, just come straight back to us.”
Cost Savings
When upgrading softwares, saving on cost was a big impetus as well. According to Hoffmann, “we didn’t really want to fork out too much extra than what we were before and – but I suppose we might have considered that if there were clear efficiency benefits coming out of that. While we end up saving 25% on time, there was also a 30% cost reduction with Trullion.”
By upgrading their software to Trullion, Bradken achieved:
Conclusion
In addition to saving time and money, as well as improving communication with their auditors, Hoffmann also notes that Trullion is making their lives easier by implementing requests and features. “It’s really great to see you guys actually listen to the customer and their needs, which we really didn’t have previously. Even those little functions like that catch-up function and then having the reporting match the GL – those things make our life so much easier…It has been a massive, massive help having you guys actually, listen to us and actually implement those requests.”
“We definitely would recommend not only the software. It’s easy to use itself but customer service is second to none. So that’s a big plus for us here. As soon as we’ve got any issues or anything like that, we would know we can actually go to you guys and ask for help really whereas yeah, previously, that just wasn’t there. So, yeah, definitely recommend Trullion.”
