Business process optimization at Leroy Merlin

26-Nov-2020

Leroy Merlin is an international home improvement and gardening retailer. Leroy Merlin Vostok is a business-unit that includes Leroy Merlin Vostok LLC and branches in Russian Federation, Republic of Belarus and Republic of Kazakhstan.

Our experts worked on two projects for Leroy Merlin: methodology on accounting processes and automation scripts of inventory surplus and shortages.

The major tasks of the project describing accounting processes methodology of the Leroy Merlin Vostok business-unit

For the project implementation, it is necessary to develop an approach to framework setting based on analysis and data to govern operations in the Leroy Merlin Vostok business-unit. It is important in order to reveal the financial results of the major business activities which take part in governing decisions concerning assets and commitments, valuation and analysis of the business activities and also economic forecasting and other managing goals.

Results of methodology description project

To fulfill the task, we created documents for 12 accounting sections describing methodology of accounting processes in following formats:

Description of methodology on accounting processes (MS Word).
Step-by-step description of accounting processes, used software, areas of responsibility and testing procedures.
Description of accounting processes schemes in BPMN notation (MS Visio).
Business transaction recording using the Oracle plan for accounts (MS Excel).

During the process of document negotiations, we cleared up:

Processes to improve.
Risks of misstatement in financial reports and lack of control procedures covering them.
The possibility of accounts convergence in order to accounting optimization.

“

Methodology description is a commonplace, but still it has some issues. The level of contractor diversity in Leroy Merlin Vostok is quite high. So detailing only one process, we had to interview over dozens of contractors. At the same time, we used a lot of IT-systems with complex approach to data exchange during the accounting process. I would like to highlight that company is developing actively. Different business and accounting processes changed or ceased during the project flow. Therefore, it was necessary to adjust the methodology.

In the project's course, we revealed some opportunities to optimize processes and undertake initiatives how to improve controlling procedures and create new ones.

— Olga Lapshina, senior consultant at NFP

The major tasks of the project on scripting the automation of inventory surplus and shortages accounting

To prepare the automation scripts of inventory surplus and shortages accounting.
To form a summary file to import data on company's surplus and shortages accounts of previous reporting year into financial IT-system.

Results of automation script project

We prepared a script concerning processing of inventory lists and a working paper with a process description and procedure of transforming inventories data.
The human participation in the process of inventory results reconciliation was decreased.
The possibility of human error during the process of inventory surplus and shortages accounting was eliminated.
The entire process of the inventory lists checking and their import into account system was sped up.

“

Under the dynamic developing of business and growing number of shops, the issue of accounting inventory surplus and shortages becomes more complex every year. The accounting procedure is simple if we do not consider its applying in more than a hundred of shops with thousands of items. We encountered the issue of choosing the optimum approach to fulfill the task. Initially there were several options, without prevailing ones, and it was not easy to choose the best. As a result, we accomplished all tasks needed to end the project.

— Andrey Matveev, project manager at NFP

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