DeAgostini UK Ltd

“On our old system it would take a box of paper and a half a day to run one report. With Access we can run the same report in seconds.”

Founded in 1901, DeAgostini is the world’s leading publisher of partwork magazines. The company’s UK division joined this marketplace in 1970 and has developed its own range of hugely successful titles, covering subjects as diverse as cake decorating and dinosaurs. Indeed, DeAgostini UK is now the number one publisher of partworks to English speaking countries, including Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.

Back in 1994, DeAgostini UK began the selection process for a new accounts system; a move that was prompted in large part by the flat structure of its existing software. Because records could not be linked together, everything pertinent to a given task or activity had to be contained in a single, isolated field. This made reporting extremely cumbersome and labour intensive. At the same time, integrating the accounts with an Oracle based Projection Module proved impossible – and it was this module that handled all the company’s print performance measurement and print projections.

Choosing & Implementing Access

During the selection process, Access Accounts was evaluated alongside packages such as Maconomy and SAP. While they all offered broadly similar levels of functionality, the value for money provided by Access Accounts (with an Oracle database) proved decisive.

Installation in the company’s London HQ was completed in December 1994 and Group Accountant, Peter O’dwyer, was delighted with the outcome. “Access provided us with excellent levels of information and powerful in-built search facilities… while and the speed and efficiency of the overall system was very impressive.”

In fact, the London implementation proved so successful that DeAgostini was soon rolling out Access Accounts to three of its sister companies, based in Japan, Germany and the Netherlands. In 2001, the combined turnover of these companies was in excess of £79 million.

Improvements to: Sales Order Processing

Companies in the DeAgostini group routinely process huge volumes of data: in the UK, sales ledger transactions can exceed 20,000 per month, while in Japan this figure climbs to 60,000. Because it is essential to keep manual processing to a minimum, many of these orders are received electronically. Similarly, the majority of DeAgostini’s invoices are raised using a bespoke circulation system. This is integrated with Access Accounts and feeds all the relevant data straight into the Access sales ledger. The SOP module within Access Accounts is also used, to raise any ad-hoc invoices that fall outside the scope of the bespoke system.

SOP with Integrated Fax Software

With fully integrated faxing, DeAgostini’s credit controllers are able to issue chase letters directly from the Access sales ledger. “Access enables us to pull up overdue invoices and issue reminders to our customers by fax. We set the printer to the fax server and it automatically faxes the reminder, complete with our logo at the top of the page and a scanned signature at the bottom. This saves times and reduces errors,” says Peter.

Improvements to: Print Performance Measurement and Print Projections

DeAgostini has a very detailed and comprehensive method for costing its activities. Every key aspect of every title is set up as a cost centre – from country and issue number to sales channel and publication format. This enables the company to measure past performance and make print run projections based on a variety of formulas.

Once again, a bespoke Oracle system was written to handle these complex requirements. It was critical for this system to be integrated with the accounts and this is another reason why Access was chosen. By selecting an Oracle-based Access solution, DeAgostini can pass budget information prepared using the Projection Module straight into the relevant ledgers of the accounts.

Improvements to: Costing

Print production is not the only activity DeAgostini needs to monitor. As a multinational organisation it is always looking for new markets – and this is where the Access costing module comes into its own.

When a publication proves successful, it may be sold out to companies in other countries. The costing module tracks all the associated expenses and these are re-charged to the local distributor. Access allows DeAgostini to quickly identify who needs to be invoiced for which titles, to apply any mark-up and then raise the invoice… all from within the costing module itself.

Improvements to: Invoice Register

With over 3,500 invoices in an average month spread across six major departments, keeping on top of the purchase ledger could prove to be a major challenge. A paper-based system is totally impractical – finding one particular invoice could take forever.

Prior to implementing Access, DeAgostini had already developed the ability to track invoices electronically. Matching this capability was a pre-requisite for the Access system, as Peter explains. “Without this, we could never meet the reporting standards set by head office.”

He continues, “Access meets this requirement head on. It allows us to see the value of any outstanding purchase ledger invoices at any given moment. This is a particular bonus at Year End. Then we can quickly establish which invoices need approval – and apply pressure to the relevant heads of department to get them through on time.”

Improvements to: Reporting

With over 500,000 nominal accounts, 2,000 suppliers, 15,000 purchase ledger invoices and 240,000 sales ledger transactions per year, the ability to pinpoint precisely what you want to analyse – and to report on it quickly – is also essential. The reporting facilities built into Access have enabled DeAgostini to do exactly that, reducing the time taken to prepare management information and making the organisation more profitable.

“On our old system it would take a box of paper and a half a day to run one report. With Access we can run the same report in seconds. The drill down and multiple levels of analysis enable us to pinpoint exactly what we need. And once we have picked exactly what we want using the sort function, we can even display it precisely how we want to,” says Peter.

This processing speed enables the company to run its management accounts monthly… and have them competed 10 days after month end. Prior to Access, reports were only run quarterly because of the time and expense involved. This delayed the flow of valuable financial information. “Access enables us to act a lot quicker,” Peter explains. “In our business, decreasing sales are inevitable. But some titles will dip faster than expected. Access enables to identify these trends and cut our print runs quickly. And the bottom line is that this saves us money.”

Peter concludes, “Access Accounts has certainly made us more efficient. Eight years ago, when we started using it, I could have listed a million and one things that were an improvement on our previous system. Today, we take it for granted.