Latvian insurance company, If Latvia, selected Standard ERP to consolidate financial information from multiple, separate systems.
If Latvia is part of the largest insurance group of Northern Europe If and has been in Latvia since January 2002. The company provides insurance services to businesses and individuals.
If Latvia employs 55 people and has five support centers located in different cities throughout Latvia. In 2002, the company's turnover reached 6 million Euros, more than doubled the previous year.
In 1998 the company started their business as Sampo Latvija and chose Standard ERP, which was recommended by Estonian colleagues. The primary reason for needing a new financial system was to increase flexibility to connect with an external insurance sales system.
If Latvia uses Standard ERP for financial management and has five employees accessing and managing the data. All sales and purchase information is consolidated and processed in Standard ERP.
"All necessary information is imported into Standard ERP. As we are a part of a large insurance group, we need to run a lot of reports for the parent company. The reporting requirements often change so we need a system where we can access data quickly. Data consolidation and reporting is possible thanks to Standard ERP's easy import / export procedures and the high level customer support we receive from BSM Konsultanti, a Certifed HansaWorld World Business Partner. Some data is still exported to spreadsheets for additional calculations."
Kristine Orlova | Chief Accountant
The Insurance industry requires very specific IT solutions, but all finance information should be consolidated in the accounting system. Standard ERP has the necessary accounting functionality and flexibility in comprehensive reporting. Many reports needed to be changed when the company joined the If group, and the information required was often only needed once. Standard ERP's export process allows information to be easily extracted from the database and imported into external spreadsheets for additional, often once-off, calculations.
Many reports had to be changed in a short time when the company joined the If group. This was solved with Standard ERP exports, and will be managed by programming in future. The easy export process allows additional calculations to be done in external spreadsheets whenever management needs additional information.
Administration costs and receipts are controlled with Standard ERP's objects structure, importing payment data into the sales system. Consolidated information and quick reporting is a necessity for sound management decision-making.
"[Standard ERP]'s built in object functionality is a powerful tool allowing the control of administrational costs. When booking incoming invoices we use up to five structured objects. Each object shows source of costs, this gives us the possibility to see figures at different levels of detail and from different angles. Now we can see the total costs of each department or look at the specific costs by employee. This information helps us to control costs levels and allows us to make informed decisions."
"We work with more than a thousand customers and we have to be very careful in monitoring the money we receive as it influences our liquidity. To keep control over this we regularly export payment information from [Standard ERP] system to the external sales system to be available to sales people," says Orlova.