Douglas Dynamics Douglas Leverages Automation for Increased Standardization and Visibility across Reconciliations and Close Tasks
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Since implementation, Douglas Dynamics has been running roughly 100 – 120 accounts through Adra Balancer, with thousands of transactions auto-reconciling each quarter. With the Adra solution, they have experienced several other benefits, including reduced manual work and more efficient and standardized processes with greater visibility across the organization.
About Douglas Dynamics
Home to the most trusted brands in the industry, Douglas Dynamics is North America’s premier manufacturer and up-fitter of commercial work truck attachments and equipment. For more than 75 years, the Company has been innovating products that not only enable people to perform their jobs more efficiently and effectively, but also enable businesses to increase profitability. Through its proprietary Douglas Dynamics Management System (DDMS), the Company is committed to continuous improvement aimed at consistently producing the highest quality products, at industry-leading levels of service and delivery that ultimately drive shareholder value. The Douglas Dynamics portfolio of products and services is separated into two segments: First, the Work Truck Attachments segment, which includes commercial snow and ice control equipment sold under the FISHER®, SNOWEX® and WESTERN® brands. Second, the Work Truck Solutions segment, which includes the up-fit of market leading attachments and storage solutions under the HENDERSON® brand, and the DEJANA® brand and its related sub-brands.
Business Drivers to Automate
Prior to implementing Adra, Douglas Dynamics was struggling with a very manual and inconsistent approach when it came to their balance sheet reconciliation and close tasks.
“Each one of our businesses were preparing their own reconciliations in Excel, saving those Excel files to a folder, and manually adding multiple signoffs within those Excel files. Additionally, they were having to take screenshots of our ERP for our trial balance to validate that the balances from our reconciliations were tied back to our ERP,” said Kevin Rapp, Internal Audit Manager at Douglas Dynamics. “When conducting these processes in Excel, it is also very difficult to evidence review. If someone had comments, they would have to send a separate email with those comments and then screenshot those comments and paste them back into the Excel file.
Overall, this resulted in a significant amount of manual work for the team and provided very limited visibility into where we were in the close process.” Being a public company, Douglas Dynamics has several SOX requirements they must adhere to, so they knew they needed to invest in a solution that provided an efficient and secure way to document their reconciliation and closing processes each month.
Why Adra by Trintech?
Faced with the realization that their manual processes were no longer manageable, Douglas Dynamics began to evaluate solutions that could offer increased efficiency, visibility and control across their reconciliations and close processes.
“We knew that if we were going to deploy a solution, we wanted one that could provide visibility into where we were in the close process and would ultimately make our end users’ lives much easier,” continued Rapp. After reviewing Adra® by Trintech, Douglas Dynamics decided to implement Adra Balancer to automate their account reconciliation and Adra Task Manager to automate their close management tasks.
Today, the Douglas Dynamics Accounting team is running roughly 100 – 120 accounts through Adra Balancer with thousands of transactions set to auto-reconcile each quarter. In addition, they are now conducting control testing within Adra Task Manager with around 100 controls in place.
At the start of the project, we were assigned an implementation specialist who met with us weekly to ensure our implementation went as smoothly as possible. Even after the solution was fully implemented, our Trintech specialist continued to follow-up with us to make sure we were maximizing the full capabilities of the solution and getting the most out of our investment.”
From a leadership perspective, Adra has provided the team with the visibility needed to feel confident in the status of the close process each month.”
ROI Achieved
Since implementing Adra, Douglas Dynamics has seen several benefits including a reduction in manual work, and more efficient and standardized processes with greater visibility. “We have our ERP integrated into Adra which auto feeds our data into Adra Balancer which has saved our team a significant amount of time and has reduced our overall risk,” said Rapp. “In addition, our Auditors also have access to Adra, so they are able to access all the information they need in one place, eliminating the need for our team to spend time manually compiling that data for them.
“Adra helps us ensure all of our close tasks are completed and that nothing is falling through the cracks,” said Rapp. “This added visibility also helps us identify where bottlenecks are occurring so we can continue to improve our processes.
”Lastly, Adra has provided the team with a consistent, standardized and centralized process. “Looking ahead, our team is now confident that if we do embark on another acquisition in the future, we have the necessary processes and technology in place to ensure that is a much more seamless experience,” concluded Rapp.
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