Alan Dempsey, Group Controller,
CEVA Logistics
Speedy Delivery
CEVA CONSOLIDATES FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS, ON BUDGET, IN SIX MONTHS.
EVA Logistics, a global leader in supply chain manage-
ment, was created in November 2006 when private equity
firm Apollo Management acquired TNT Logistics from Thomas
Nationwide Transport of The Netherlands. Seven months later,
CEVA acquired Houston, Texas–based Eagle Global Logistics
(EGL), to create a logistics powerhouse with 50,000 employ-
ees in more than 150 countries. But the expanding CEVA—
now boasting € 6. 3 billion annual revenue—urgently needed
a single reporting and consolidation package for 400 users in
240 entities worldwide.
TON HENDRIKS
As a recently divested company that quickly acquired
another company of almost equal size, CEVA had many business areas whose financial results were locked within disparate
IT systems. CEVA’s Contract Logistics and Freight Management
lines of business—formerly operating as different companies—
used nonintegrated consolidation and reporting systems
that made the monthly closing process time consuming and
complex. “The global consolidation process for the company
relied on two antiquated legacy systems, which were prehistoric
and inefficient, lacked transparency, and were in risk of col-
lapse,” says Alan Dempsey, group controller at CEVA, in The
Netherlands. “We simply couldn’t provide timely consolidated
financial information.”
“Naturally having paid € 1. 4 billion for EGL, CEVA’s executive management board and Apollo as our shareholder wanted
to understand in detail the financial results of the newly
acquired company, including all its global operations,” says
Ruben McDougal, CFO at CEVA.
To solve this problem, Dempsey and the CEVA team
turned to Oracle Hyperion Financial Management as the core
of a new financial consolidation process and implemented a
global solution in only six months. Oracle Hyperion Financial
Management is a Web-based application that provides global
financial consolidation, reporting, and analysis. The system is
modern, fast, and user friendly, and it consolidates 240 different entities into a single management and legal entity reporting
structure at CEVA.
Management’s challenge of efficiently consolidating financial
information from different entities isn’t all that unique. In fact,
for various reasons, many companies need to collect financial
