Customer case study
Kookaburra Sport
and Sage Data & Analytics
Customer case study
Kookaburra Sport
and Sage Data & Analytics
A Game Plan for Better Reporting:
How a staple Australian sports brand streamlined consolidated financial reporting with Sage Data & Analytics
About
Kookaburra Sport
Kookaburra Sport, supported by Sage X3 partner, CitySoft, is a leading Australian sports footwear, apparel and equipment company, renowned for its world-class cricket, football and hockey products.
Founded in 1890 and headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, Kookaburra has a rich history in producing high-quality sporting gear, notably market leading ball production across cricket, hockey and AFL footballs, and producing cricket bats, hockey sticks, protective equipment, footwear and apparel servicing athletes from grass roots to the elite across cricket, hockey and football.
Industry
Sports, Apparel
Website
Solution
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Background
Kookaburra Sport was facing significant challenges in consolidating its financial data across multiple entities. With operations spanning Australia, New Zealand, India, and the UK, the organisation needed timely, accurate, and consolidated financial reporting.
Prior to engaging with Zap, Kookaburra relied on a highly manual, fragmented process, using Excel and a third-party reporting tool that was not up to the task, leading to delays and inconsistencies in presenting financial reports to management.
Following significant staff turnover in the finance team, the company struggled to produce consolidated financial statements. Despite using Sage X3 ERP, the existing reporting processes were ineffective in delivering consolidated financial data in the group’s functional currency, AUD, and had difficulties explaining variances between local and group ledger balances.
Challenges faced
Enter Financial Controller, Stuart Cummins, and Functional Consultant, Surender Sharma. Upon joining Kookaburra, they inherited several challenges:
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Inconsistent Consolidated Reporting: Kookaburra was unable to produce consolidated financial statements in a timely manner. Individual entity results were presented in local currencies without consolidation to the group’s reporting currency, AUD, which created a substantial gap in management’s ability to make informed business decisions.
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Fragmented Data and Tools: The company relied on a mixture of reporting tools, including a third-party software package not capable of meeting their needs, and Excel, which only compounded reporting delays. The previous system also applied informal exchange rates to consolidate results, further complicating data accuracy.
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Complex Custom Reporting Needs: A specific requirement for a bespoke profit and loss (P&L) report - where certain general ledger (GL) accounts and cost centre combinations needed to be mapped above the gross margin line - proved challenging and highlighted the limitations of the existing tools.
Solution outcomes
Stuart and Surender, familiar with Sage Data & Analytics (powered by Zap) from prior experience, quickly chose it as the solution to address these challenges. SD&A’s robust integration with Sage X3 and its ability to provide automated, real-time reporting proved crucial to streamlining their financial operations.
We knew SD&A was a good tool, and once implemented, it met all of our expectations. The consolidation is seamless, the reports are reliable, and the integrity of the data is significantly improved, giving us the clarity we needed to make informed decisions.
Stuart Cummins,
Financial Controller, Kookaburra Sport
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Automated Consolidation: By leveraging SD&A, Kookaburra can now generate consolidated financial reports directly from Sage X3, eliminating reliance on manual processes. The system’s ability to track local currency and group currency balances ensures consistency in financial data across the business.
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Single Source of Truth: With Zap’s integration, Kookaburra now has a “single source of truth,” where data from multiple entities is automatically consolidated into one centralised view. This significantly improves management’s ability to see accurate, real-time data without manual intervention.
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Custom Reporting: Kookaburra partnered with Zap’s professional services team to develop a bespoke P&L report tailored to the company’s specific requirements around GL account and cost centre combinations. The resulting report successfully met all business needs and offered a dynamic solution for consistent month-over-month reporting.
Conclusion
Sage Data & Analytics (powered by Zap) has been instrumental in transforming Kookaburra’s financial reporting process. The finance team now enjoys streamlined, automated reporting, improved data integrity, and a system capable of meeting their complex business needs.
The team is confident that Zap’s capabilities will continue to drive Kookaburra’s growth and meet its evolving reporting needs. By enabling timely, accurate decision-making, SD&A has become a vital asset in Kookaburra’s financial operations, allowing the team to spend more energy on actioning and analysing data rather than compiling reports and looking backwards.
Partnership highlights
Consolidation of data from multiple servers: Data from a variety of venues is now collated into a single centralised location. Today, Trader House can more easily view the big picture when it comes to their data, accessing everything they need to know whenever they need it.
Simplified exports and data manipulation within Excel: Provided with the functionality to export raw data into Excel, Trader House can now easily manipulate it to support an array of reporting requirements. This added flexibility has helped them further analyze the information and generate tailored reports for stakeholders.
Simplified exports and data manipulation within Excel: Provided with the functionality to export raw data into Excel, Trader House can now easily manipulate it to support an array of reporting requirements. This added flexibility has helped them further analyze the information and generate tailored reports for stakeholders.
Partnership highlights
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Improved Data Integrity: SD&A provides Kookaburra with visibility into the gaps and inconsistencies in their financial data, helping the finance team address these issues proactively.
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Streamlined Reporting: Consolidated financial statements, previously difficult to obtain, can now be produced in real-time, providing management with an accurate picture of the group’s performance.
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Efficient and Scalable Reporting: The system allows Kookaburra to run reports by various dimensions - such as region, brand, or product - something that was challenging with the prior tools.