"BrightAnalytics was the icing on the cake in the transition from paper to digital accounting. "

The foundation for decisions

Making the transition from a paper-based accounting system to a fast, digital solution was the task for Dries Holvoet when he joined De Laet & Van Haver. The company had grown from a small butcher shop into much more. With five businesses, the time had come for automated financial and operational reporting. Since then, BrightAnalytics software has provided the foundation for strategic decisions.

“It all started with one butcher shop in Hove,” begins Managing Director Dries Holvoet. “But over time, our organisation grew, and today we have five companies. The focus of the business has always been on meat: we aimed to offer quality charcuterie and meat products. The focus was not on modern accounting. The accountant processed the numbers, but nothing further was done with them; we were not a data-driven company.”

That changed when Dries came on board. “I was hired to implement a transformation and make the transition from paper accounting to a fast digital solution, so that we had a stronger foundation to support our growth. Part of that was to base our decisions more on numbers. I searched for a tool that could support us in this, and found it important that we could both analyse and visualise data. Additionally, I wanted to be able to restrict certain data by assigning different roles, as not everyone in the organisation needs to see everything.” He compared two potential solutions, including BrightAnalytics. “The pleasant contact with the BrightAnalytics sales department and the fact that our accountant recommended this tool convinced me. An additional advantage was that BrightAnalytics already had integrations with our accounting package.”

Well – founded decisions

Three years after the platform’s implementation, BrightAnalytics is now frequently used by various profiles within the organisation. “BrightAnalytics was the cherry on top in the transition from paper to digital accounting. It ensures that numbers speak to a broader group of people, ranging from operational staff in the factory to the business owner, who can regularly consult both accounting and operational figures. If I see colleagues in the distance with a blue screen, I know they are working in BrightAnalytics. We now refer to our numbers much more frequently. For instance, when the sales department suspects that a particular customer segment is becoming more important, we have the reflex to look it up and see what revenue that segment actually represents. Today, numbers are more often an argument in decisions than they used to be. And that is thanks to BrightAnalytics, which makes this very visible. Additionally, the system allows different people to view data through different lenses. For example, there are different roles for someone in my position, a sales manager, or a store manager.”

Monitoring Gross Margins

The fact that there is only one-way communication between BrightAnalytics and the ERP system also motivates Dries to encourage employees to really engage with and explore the possibilities of BrightAnalytics. “In our ERP system, such incidents have occurred in the past,” he explains. “A colleague once pulled a statistic that inadvertently wrote off active data that still needed to be sent to accounting. This cannot happen with BrightAnalytics because it does not send anything back to the ERP system. This makes everyone feel comfortable trying something new in BrightAnalytics or conducting a search. They know they can’t go wrong.”

Dries himself works in the system about three times a week. “Not a week goes by without consulting BrightAnalytics, for various reasons. The apps we use most frequently are the management reporting for finance, and Orders vs. Invoices for operations. The management reporting visually presents important figures attractively. The financial app enables us to closely monitor our gross margins. For example, with the rising prices of a couple of years ago, we were able to clearly demonstrate the impact. Additionally, we also add certain company-specific indicators ourselves, which allow us to display a number of our own ratios.”

Business Case for New Markets 

Additionally, Dries and his colleagues also prepare sales meetings, planning, and the estimation of production volumes using BrightAnalytics. “With a few clicks, I can find out how much minced meat has been sold to bakers for making sausage rolls. I could never find that so quickly in our ERP system. Since this is possible with BrightAnalytics, we actively use these features in sales and forecasting. I can also create codes for different customer types, allowing me to dive even deeper into the data. The great thing about this system is that it offers several standard packages, so we don’t have to reinvent the wheel each time. Orders vs. Invoices is a good example of this. And if I want to make a modification, I can request it from the customer service department. BrightAnalytics has invested heavily in this, and their service is excellent today. My contact person is very proactive: every so often, she contacts me to ask if there is anything else she can do for me.”

Thanks to BrightAnalytics, I can now also view all customer and supplier volumes across the companies with a single click. “This concerns matters that span our companies. It’s something I can undoubtedly handle more efficiently with the intercompany option of BrightAnalytics. That will likely be our next step,” he concludes.