"Everything was fantastic, and what we wanted would not have worked with another software company."

Julian Mudge, SS&A Albury Financial Manager

Organisation
Albury Sailors, Soldiers, and Airmen’s Club Ltd (SS&A Albury) is a premium entertainment venue in the heart of the Albury CBD, located on the border of New South Wales and Victoria. Formally opened in 1946, the club employs 150 people, with half of those being casual, and the other half a mixture of full and part time.

SS&A Albury have been partnering with Professional Advantage (PA) for almost 5 years, and it was in discussions with their PA Client Management Team that the topic of Microsoft Power BI came up as a solution to their changing cash balancing and general ledger needs.

“PA knows that we like to be self-sufficient at SS&A Albury. We are certainly happy with the balance and the business relationship we have had over the years.”
Julian Mudge, Financial Manager, SS&A Albury

Power BI is a business analytics solution that allows for visualisations of data and insights that can be shared across an organisation. However, in the case of SS&A Albury, they did something a little different.

Need
SS&A Albury had recently installed a cash recycling machine—handling all their cash, the machine is now responsible for counting money coming in and out, and also provides the required floats for all areas of the establishment at the touch of a button—which changed their cash handling and reporting processes dramatically. This machine meant a significant reduction in manual hours as the reconciliations and accounting that used to take eight hours a day, seven days a week, were now all being handled by the machine. However, it rendered the previous software used for cash balancing and general ledger accounts obsolete.

“I had a look around to see what other people were doing and couldn’t really find anything that fitted the model that we wanted. When the topic of Power BI came up with PA, we discussed how it was a bespoke and very flexible bit of software. Whilst it wasn’t designed for the purpose we had in mind, it could be custom built to do anything.” 
Julian Mudge, Financial Manager, SS&A Albury

Whilst still looking into possible software solutions, Julian Mudge, Financial Manager at SS&A Albury, built an Excel spreadsheet that did what was needed, but was messy and easily corrupted. There was a clear need for something robust that could be easily adapted by the users.

Solution
Once the solution of Power BI with PA had been decided upon, a PA Power BI consultant spent a week with SS&A Albury to implement all that they needed. As the requirements of their Power BI were different to those normally utilised by an organisation, the process was not as straight forward as other Power BI projects.

“It was made clear that what we were wanting from Power BI was a little different to the norm, and I was under no illusion that it was going to be an easy thing to do. We knew where we stood throughout the project, so I never felt like what we wanted wasn’t being delivered.”
Julian Mudge, Financial Manager, SS&A Albury

The spreadsheets that Julian had previously created were used as a basis for discussions with the consultant, resulting in a Power BI product that could be used for the exact purpose required.

“PA really took on board what we were trying to achieve and worked to that specification.”
Julian Mudge, Financial Manager, SS&A Albury

The five days that the project was worked on with the PA consultant on-site was also utilised as a training opportunity, with Julian observing the work that was done to familiarise himself further with the solution.

“It is a Microsoft product, so it is following the rules of other programs within the Microsoft Office suite, meaning it took a remarkably short time to follow what was done, including identifying the formulas and adjusting the parameters as required.”
Julian Mudge, Financial Manager, SS&A Albury

Results
The implementation of Power BI has increased efficiency and made processes more auditable. Julian has the ability to track and replicate what staff have done on a day-to-day basis to ensure that the data integrity is there; prior to this, simply an Excel spreadsheet was used which did not allow for replication.

“The major benefit for us is that I can do auditing and variance checking to make sure that the data has been entered correctly, and the output is getting the result that we want.”
Julian Mudge, Financial Manager, SS&A Albury

Previously the data was held within one spreadsheet per day, meaning completing comparisons was manual and clumsy. It is now possible to view the data for multiple days simultaneously.

“Part of my audit process is to compile an entire month, which eliminated the variances across days. The month can be compared to the general ledger account, and I can identify that everything is in balance and within variance tolerances that I can verify.”
Julian Mudge, Financial Manager, SS&A Albury

As Power BI is generally a visualisation tool and SS&A Albury were going against the grain with their requirements, there was an element of the unknown prior to work starting as to what the final outcome would be, with some expectation that it would just be spreadsheets with additional lock down features.

“What it delivered and what it actually did for us was exactly what we needed. I don’t think we could have found that in any other product.”
Julian Mudge, Financial Manager, SS&A Albury

The Future
The scope of what can be achieved with Power BI is now appreciated by SS&A Albury, including the ability to present data and insights to higher level management.

“It is possible to learn something from the data, so we will look to taking it beyond the transactional side in the future; after all, we already have the good quality data there.”
Julian Mudge, Financial Manager, SS&A Albury

Prior to their implementation of Power BI, Julian was aware of the tool and had had some experimentation with it.

“I set it aside but with an understanding of what it could do and a knowledge that there were applications that could be utilised within the business beyond what we are currently using it for.”
Julian Mudge, Financial Manager, SS&A Albury

The organisation does not currently use Power BI as a dedicated BI tool, but part of the benefit of partnering with PA is that the support and knowledge is there for when they want to take the next step.

“We definitely like Power BI and think it will be our BI tool. While we are constantly on the lookout for tools to improve our business practices, any additional BI needs that we identify will be assessed through the lens of can Power BI handle it? From what I have seen with the support of Professional Advantage, I am confident the answer will be yes.”
Julian Mudge, Financial Manager, SS&A Albury