The Client
A global asset management firm with a complex and growing finance reporting landscape, this organization serves internal management stakeholders across multiple business lines and geographies. As the firm migrated to a new ERP system, the limitations of its existing MI approach, built on manual spreadsheets, siloed data extracts, and an on-premise warehouse, had become a strategic constraint on financial decision-making speed and reliability.
The Challenge
Finance management information was built on a foundation that could no longer keep pace with the firm’s scale or reporting demands, manual spreadsheets, siloed data extracts, and on-premise infrastructure had become the bottleneck for every reporting cycle. The combined effect was slow, unreliable MI that left business teams dependent on IT for even routine analytical requests.
- No Governed Source of Truth: Finance management information relied on manual spreadsheets and siloed extracts, producing inconsistent figures and eroding confidence in reported data across the business.
- Scalability Constraints: On-premise warehousing and Excel-based reporting could not scale with growing data volumes or support the concurrent reporting demand of a multi-business-line finance function.
- Slow, Batch-Heavy Pipelines: Batch-heavy data pipelines delayed management information and period-end analysis, reducing the agility of finance teams during critical reporting windows.
- Limited History and Lineage: Restricted data history and the absence of end-to-end lineage made trend analysis difficult and audit substantiation time-consuming.
- IT Dependency for Every Report: Business teams had to route every new reporting requirement through IT, creating bottlenecks that slowed the finance function’s ability to respond to management information needs.
The Impact
- 15+ Source systems integrated.
- 1 Governed source of truth on Snowflake.
- Full Lineage enabling self-service validation.
The Solution
Hoonartek built a governed cloud finance data warehouse on Snowflake as the single source of management information and reporting for the firm’s new ERP. Fifteen or more source systems, spanning operational and finance data, were integrated into one unified data model, with the data model itself designed by Hoonartek alongside multiple purpose-built data products, each carrying clear mapping and transformation rules tailored to specific finance reporting needs.
Automated reconciliation across systems was delivered using DevFac test automation, raising confidence in the numbers by eliminating the manual checking that had previously been required at every reporting cycle. Full data lineage was made available to business users, enabling finance teams to trace and validate every figure back to its originating source without IT involvement. The result is a finance function that accesses reliable, governed MI on demand, with the self-service capability to validate figures, explore trends, and substantiate audit evidence independently.
Key Benefits
- Single Governed Source of Truth: Trusted finance data on Snowflake replaces manual spreadsheet reporting, giving the entire finance function a consistent, reliable foundation for MI and decision-making.
- Faster, More Accurate Decisions: MI and analytics are available quickly on reliable, reconciled data, eliminating the delays and uncertainty that characterized the previous spreadsheet-based approach.
- Purpose-Built Data Products: Data products modelled for specific finance reporting needs replace ad hoc, one-off extracts, improving consistency and reducing the effort required for recurring reporting cycles.
- Confidence in the Numbers: Automated reconciliation across all integrated systems eliminates the manual checking overhead and reduces the risk of errors reaching reported figures.
- Self-Service Validation: Full lineage enables finance teams to trace every figure to its source independently, reducing IT dependency for routine validation and audit substantiation.