Olam International deploys SAP Solutions for better financial reporting

With business growth, Olam International faces the challenge of maintaining a unified, accurate visibility into financial information, which is critical to keeping expansion on track and complying with recently mandated International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).

To these aims, Olam relied on enterprise performance management solutions (EPM) from SAP.

With the SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation application, part of the portfolio of SAP BusinessObjects EPM solutions, Olam has completed its first fiscal year's IFRS-compliant reporting, consolidating financial data for more than 90 legal entities operating as 250 profit centers in different currencies with a $8.6 billion business.

Named on Forbes 2009 Asia List of Fabulous 50 Firms, the Singapore-based Olam is a global supplier of raw cashew nuts and robusta coffee beans, and ranks as one of the world's top-three rice suppliers.

The company operates in 60 countries with 13,000 employees, and serves more than 11,000 customers across 20 product lines.

Since deploying SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation, the company streamlined its financial reporting and consolidating process and delivered real-time information for operational and strategic decisions.

Previously, product accountants at the company's headquarters in Singapore had to consolidate financial data sent by country teams using Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, and reporting considerable time.

With the SAP application, the company enjoys fast, accurate and automatic consolidation.