Case Study - Argonon

We were approached by the Finance Director at Argonon in March 2022 as they were investigating solutions for their accounting, cost reporting and payroll needs, and we had been recommended to them by an accounting practice they had initially reached out to. Following initial scoping calls and product demonstrations we worked alongside them for around 3 months to configure their ideal solution, migrate their data, design their reporting and provide the finance team with training.

The Argonon Group is a group of 8 media production companies across the UK and the US. They were founded in 2011 by James Burstall who is the CEO of Leopard Films. Their offices are based in London, Los Angeles, New York, Liverpool, Oklahoma and Glasgow. Many of their media productions are around factual entertainment, reality TV, drama, and children’s programming for various networks across the world. The group saw a turnover of £55.6m in 2021 and was listed on the London Stock Exchange as 1000 Companies to Inspire Britain in 2016 and 2017.

Situational Analysis

Following initial introductory calls with the Client and a comprehensive scoping exercise carried out at the very beginning of the project several key deliverables were identified to ensure the new solution would meet the needs of both the finance team and other stakeholders of Argonon group.

Previously, the client was using Sage 50, a desktop version of Sage which presented many inefficiencies and required the client to work using Excel working schedules for reporting and data uploads. Sage 50 also did not benefit from advanced technological tools which more modern Cloud-based software's offer as standard, and incurred reasonably high costs due to the need to maintain servers for this on-premise system. Given the size of the Group  and the number of underlying productions and entities  to maintain the accounts for on a regular basis it was clear that a large proportion of the finance teams time was eaten up by more menial processing and bookkeeping tasks, and there was therefore a real easy-win here from implementing a software solution which provided functionality to ease or even automate elements of the bookkeeping process and increase efficiency, whilst also being Cloud-based to save on server costs and open up the possibility of more agile and collaborative working in real time for the finance team.

Another key deliverable for Argonon was around reporting for the Group, at a base level it was important to the client that the reporting process have a faster turnaround, be accurate and reliable, and be less reliant on Excel schedules maintained and/or created outside of the system. Drilling down to the specific requirements for reporting the main area covered the ability to easily consolidate data across all group entities and productions globally, so that the client would be able to produce automated Group Consolidated financial statements/reporting, as well dashboards for global production reporting.

Beyond existing integrations identified as part of our system recommendations, Argonon brought to our attention their existing US based production management system and enquired as to the possibility of integrating this as well into their new financial system set-up, which we were happy to investigate and look into to further improve the quality of their reporting and increase the scope for automating their data processing.

System Recommendations 

As mentioned in the Situational Analysis above, we had several areas to take into consideration when identifying potential solutions and systems for Argonon. Whilst most of the Accounting and Invoice processing systems we work with would deliver on the data automation and bookkeeping efficiencies, the increased complexity around Group Consolidation, Multi-currency and dimensional reporting meant we focused on slightly more sophisticated systems/mid-market ERP’s which include more functionality. For the reporting requirements we quickly ruled out utilising reporting functionality in-built within accounting systems, given the high degree of customisation required for global production reporting dashboards and the potential future use for production cost managers, and looked at some of the standalone systems which could deliver the reporting piece and be fully integrated with the other systems selected as part of the solution.

The solution we identified and presented to the client as delivering on all their key deliverables involved implementing 3 different systems, being Basecone for its OCR scanning technology,  in-system cost approvals, and the incredible user interface to make invoice processing simple and efficient, Twinfield for the core accounting system as this delivers a very reliable solution for multi-currency, multi-entity groups with multi-dimensional reporting needs and offers some more complex functionality and accounting automations without the higher price-points of the mid-market ERP systems we work with, and finally Ezora for its ability to create fully custom sophisticated reporting and dashboards, as well as the possibility for providing integrations and automating data processing back into the accounting system or incorporating non-financial data into the clients reporting.

This suite of 3 Cloud-based systems already seamlessly integrated with each other so this would assist with keeping the timelines for implementation low as well as delivering on real-time processing and information flow to make the finance function more agile. Through our close long-term partnership and experience of using Ezora we were also confident in its ability to integrate into some of the other systems already in use by Argonon, such as Pleo for expense management and their US production management system, which would deliver for the client beyond their original base-case requirements for the project on the reporting and dashboarding side.

Implementation

On agreeing on the system recommendations put forward, we worked closely with the client to design a new global group chart of accounts, as well as a dimensional structure which would support their ability to report on their productions as well as generating group consolidated financial statements. This was essential to get right in the first instance to allow for Twinfield to be configured correctly prior to migrating data.

The migration involved a full historical migration at transactional level, for approximately 20 entities in total, from accounting data exported from Sage 50. Whilst this involved large volumes of data and a mapping exercise from the Sage 50 chart of accounts to the new global group chart of accounts agreed with the client this migration ran smoothly, mainly thanks to the clients accounting records being in good order in their prior system.

Following the data migration some of the Twinfield functionality also had to be configured prior to go-live, to allow the client to gain some of the accounting automations they were after during the project scoping, this included setting up bank feeds to automatically import daily banking transactions into the account, payment files set up and testing to allow supplier payments to be exported from Twinfield and uploaded directly to their banking portal, intercompany modules for ease of dealing with intercompany cross recharges and consolidated reporting, and the creation of mapping files for ease of importing in expenses from Pleo into the system rather than rely on manual inputs.

The final stage involved report design with Ezora, to tailor this to Argonon’s needs and test using the historic data migrated into the system to ensure the client could thoroughly check that these were to their satisfaction, with further integration work into their US production management system ongoing with recommendations made to the client on preparatory work necessary to be carried out before this phase of the project can complete.

Training

With each solution we provide, we host system training workshops via Microsoft Teams. These are recorded and sent to the client for future reference. The training helped to instil knowledge of the system and develop strong processes as well to ensure the system is used efficiently and effectively, without creating more work of pain points for the finance team. There were also sessions on the reporting dashboards and structures, ensuring that best practices are maintained, and the team are aware of how to use each system in terms of carrying out their usual accounting tasks as well as navigating and generating the reporting outputs in Ezora as and when needed.

Project Outcomes

Working with Argonon on this project was a wonderful experience for us, a collaborative approach with the client and a finance team more than willing to embrace the change of systems and new way of working. The implementation process ran smoothly and delivered on the key deliverables for the client as well.

With their new solution Argonon should now have the scalability to continue to grow and expand without having to place additional strain on their existing finance team given the automation functionalities now in place, and the finance team should find themselves with more-time to tackle more interesting reporting and projects. The audit process should also be much less arduous given the digital audit trails and in-system approvals for purchases in addition to reduced reliance on Excel for workings and reports. With the competitive price point of their solutions Argonon should also experience some reduction in their costs, now that there is no need to maintain expensive servers/software, and automations should help with reducing the need for more staff to cover basic bookkeeping tasks even as the business grows.

We are thankful to have worked with Argonon on this, and we cannot wait to see how the business evolves in the future. Till then, we will be on the side-lines waiting to support with any system queries.