Success Story Symbiotics
« We wanted a centralised administrative and analytical management tool, shared by all. »
Anne-Sophie Henon
Head of Controlling, Symbiotics SA
The story in brief:
Symbiotics, the leading market access platform for impact investing, dedicated to financing micro, small and medium enterprises in emerging and developing markets. Since its launch in 2005, the company’s mission has been to foster sustainable development in emerging and frontier economies.
The challenge
How can the process of accounting and administrative management be optimised?
With multiple subsidiaries around the world using different solutions, Symbiotics was wasting a lot of time aggregating accounting data. This situation became even more complex as the company grew. Symbiotics wanted to standardise and centralise the tools used for administrative and analytical management in order to improve efficiency.
Symbiotics SA
- Sector: financial
- Headquarters: Geneva
- Subsidiaries: 7
- Employees: 170
The project with Swisscom
- Standardisation and centralisation of processes between the headquarter and the seven international subsidiaries: significant time reduction of reporting activities.
- A Swisscom team of three expert consultants who accompanied Symbiotics throughout the project, from pre-sales to maintenance of the solution.
- A methodology that enabled the project to be managed and implemented for less than 80% of the estimated budget for deployment.
The solution
To answer this challenge, Symbiotics hired an IT project consultant who helped identify the needs accurately. The appropriate solution turned out to be a trio consisting of: Business Central for accounting, SwissSalary for payroll and the Continia tools, all integrated by Swisscom.
It took 18 months from drafting the requirements until the end of the implementation process. The Swisscom team remained the same from the beginning of the project, which helped the consultants to better understand the company’s challenges and issues, and provide rapid solutions. The pandemic situation was an additional challenge for the teams, who had to work entirely remotely since travelling to the subsidiaries abroad was impossible.
Having been phased in gradually, the implementation of the tools is now nearing completion. Swisscom will now be providing support.
« I'm very pleased to have worked with Swisscom these last 18 months and proud of the results achieved. »
Laurent Marmeys, Head of Finance, Symbiotics SA
Benefits for Symbiotics
Standardisation
All Symbiotics subsidiaries now have standardised, centralised tools.
Consistent and integrated ecosystem
Information is exchanged regularly and automatically with business intelligence and human resources software.
Remote monitoring
The tools allow the team at the headquarter to monitor the work of accountants in the subsidiaries and take over if necessary.
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