PEP Africa is a customer-focused discount retailer that sells a wide range of affordable, good quality products for the whole family, including clothing, footwear, homeware, financial and cellular products. It is the largest single brand discount retailer in Africa with more than 200 stores in four countries: Angola, Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia.
Pain points
“We started small, then grew, and as we grew, so did the reporting requirements,” says Anjelica Swart, Finance Business Analyst at PEP Africa.
With operations spread across multiple African countries, each with its own complexities, the finance team was stuck trying to manage a ballooning set of Excel reports. Consolidating data from four countries manually became a real challenge.
“It got to the point where rolling the report forward made you nervous,” she says. “If you didn’t update a formula or link just right, you were not sure if something was wrong until you did your month end recons. And good luck figuring it out!”
Implementing Finnivo®
With multiple countries and two (now three) different systems in play, integrating data wasn’t straightforward. Finnivo® provided us with various integration and import options, including the ability to import via custom tables as well as the ability to import manually. The flexibility of the platform meant the team could customise it to suit their retail-specific reporting needs, including retail stock accounting – which not many systems can handle well.
“It used to be a cumbersome process looking for the detail we needed and creating reports. Finnivo® made it quicker and way more flexible,” says Swart.
One of the biggest differentiators, she adds, was Finnivo®’s support team. Made up of finance professionals, the team understands the complexities of finance reporting and can speak the same language as their clients while bringing technical expertise to the table.
The benefits
Before Finnivo®, one accountant would spend two days linking up just one tab of a manual report. That same task now takes minutes. “If you want to get to the root of a number, you can just drill down. No more sifting through layers of spreadsheets,” she adds.
The team now generates reports faster, with more confidence, and is even producing monthly store income reports that used to be quarterly only.
What’s next
The team has already built reports for other departments – like supply chain – and is starting to explore Finnivo®’s full capabilities, from forecasting to presentation-building.
“We’re not just using it for financial reporting anymore. We are trying to build reports that other departments might need or find useful, and already have one for Supply Chain and HR,” says Swart, adding that there are still plans to bring budgeting fully onto the platform too.
Would you recommend Finnivo®?
“Absolutely. I don’t have a lot of experience with other tools but seeing what Finnivo®’s done for us – the time we’ve saved, the accuracy we’ve gained – I’d recommend it without a doubt.”
For a business like PEP Africa, Finnivo® hasn’t just streamlined reporting – it’s changed the way the finance team works, thinks and plans for the future.