The Company

Hankyu Hanshin Express International is not only a leading Japanese travel agent, they’re also one of the largest freight forwarders in Japan, holding customer service a number one priority. The European division has a presence in UK, Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium and France.

Hankyu Hanshin Express were looking at a cross company project to centralise all their IT infrastructure of which the accounting system forms part. The EMEA operations were all running autonomous and disparate finance and logistic systems which were unconnected.

The consolidation of EMEA accounts for reporting to Japan is a long and complicated procedure – reducing valuable resource time on this activity to get accurate results was identified as a key objective in this project.

Some of the countries were required to use a local statutory chart of accounts for reporting purposes – a need for a common company chart of accounts was also a key requirement in order to run all company reports from one system either separately or as part of a group.

The Objectives

• Consolidation of global accounts
• A common company chart of accounts
• Eliminate costly hardware and infrastructure maintenance across sites
• Compliance with European statutory legal & fiscal requirements
• Manage Inter-company transactions
• Centralise all systems
• Streamline multi-currency accounting and reporting

The solution

Sage X3 was the perfect fit to Hankyu Hanshin Express’s needs. It has enabled them to easily deploy a centralised system which can be accessed either by remote VPN or via the web. Each site can operate in their local languages, and currency, anywhere around the world while still complying with native legislation. Additionally there is the functionality to translate the screens into Japanese and report on the whole group in Japanese Yen.

The multiple General Ledger capability of X3 has allowed for multiple charts of accounts – making it easier to report locally and as a group enabling Hankyu Hanshin Express to aggregate ‘on the fly’ and rapidly reduce down time in creating the management reports.

Hankyu Hanshin Express were also looking to put in place business processes to drive efficiencies and Sage X3 has a number of ‘business enablers’ to achieve this. In addition to the accounting functions, Sage X3 offers a set of core enterprise-wide workflow management software features that has helped Hankyu Hanshin Express transform the business into a real-time, on demand organisation, responsive to customer needs.

The results

Key project objectives have been achieved and delivered on time and within budget. Not only has the solution enabled Hankyu to report properly and more effectively it has enabled them to make informed decisions to support business growth and future plans for expansion.

The quick deployment time has also meant Hankyu can maximise their return on investment as early as possible and start to gain business benefit from a sound ERP solution in a very quick timeframe.

Having worked with Acuity since using the smaller Sage 50 product Hankyu have migrated through the Sage mid-market product portfolio as their business has grown. Seamless migration of data and trust in Sage products meant the move to Sage X3 was a natural progression for them. Jon Smerin, Project Manager commented:

“We are very, very happy with Acuity.”