Business Drivers to Automate

After years of error-prone, manual processes, Ahold Delhaize knew that there had to be an easier way. “We used paper copies of everything, including our backup support, which had to be physically signed and scanned,” shared Brian Bittinger, Analyst IV, Corporate Accounting and Reporting, at Ahold Delhaize. “These processes were time-consuming and made it difficult to track progress closely, not to mention they led to a significant waste of paper.”

Finding Cadency by Trintech

In an effort to resolve their manual, disconnected, and wasteful processes, Ahold Delhaize began evaluating solutions. “We wanted to have all of our reconciliations, including signatures and time stamps, available in one location so that we could monitor our financial close process as well as run reports to understand things like statuses of items and outstanding issues,” commented Bittinger. “Our counterpart in Europe had been using Trintech and was very happy with the solution, so it just made sense to align our office here in the United States to their tech stack.”

While any change is difficult to navigate, implementation went smoothly, and the Ahold Delhaize team soon recognized the significant benefits of automation. “Users enjoy the time savings and managers love that workflows are timestamped and tracked automatically. Our auditors immediately liked it, since it eliminated a lot of leg work checking for sign offs, etc.,” said Bittinger.

Solution in Action

Since implementing Trintech, Ahold Delhaize has seen significant benefits. “We’ve seen an overarching reduction in labor, whether it be man hours, supplies, or filing cabinet space,” shared Bittinger. “We’ve been able to measure and track our improvements in time to close, hours spent on reconciliations, and the percentage of total reconciliations being automated. The influx of reliable information has been a game changer as far as our reporting and decision making.”

Over the years, Ahold Delhaize and Trintech have built a strong and
lasting partnership: “I refer to and think of the Trintech team as an extension of our internal team. We can run ideas and issues by them, open cases and brainstorm solutions to help us accomplish our goals and objectives. They’ve been very supportive during our digital transformation journey with regards to account reconciliations and they’ve consistently had quick and effective solutions to roadblocks we’ve encountered, which have allowed us to continue making strides for change within our finance team.”

“Our goal moving forward is to increase the use of automation with regards to our reconciliations. This will provide our team more time to research and resolve open items,” shared Bittinger. “We’re also looking into expanding our usage of Trintech to assist in tracking and escalating our speed to close and streamlining our journal entries.”