FRA CASE STUDY

NEO Energy partnered with GK to implement the Oracle EPM Financials application, as a replacement for the reporting and analysis functionality provided by the standard SAP tools, and to provide the functionality to run their financial forecast and budgeting process. 

The benefit of working with GK is ‘dealing with a small set of experienced consultants that understand both the accounting perspectives and the technical requirements’.

GK brought its understanding of the Oil and Gas sector to this project building Asset hierarchies that accounts for Hubs / Fields as well as catering for JV Opex / JV Capex and detailed AFEs (approved for expenditure projects).

AT A GLANCE

Project Outcome

“We were pleased to deliver at NEO a single source of truth for Simon in Oracle EPM using Oracle’s best practice template “

Ed Graham – Programme Director at GK

“We were very impressed by GK’s cashflow tool and while it wasn’t part of
the original scope, we decided to implement it with excellent results”

Simon Tweedie – Corporate Controller at NEO

 “We were able to work with Simon’s team to understand their issues, suggest and develop solutions and get even more from their investment in Oracle.”

Mark Wright – Director of Planning Solutions at GK

The Challenge

NEO’s finance team, led by Simon, have a clear vision of what they need from their reporting and planning systems even though their industry sector and business is complex and fast changing.

NEO Energy, an independent full-cycle North Sea operator in the UK Continental Shelf implemented SAP S4/Hana Public Edition for their ERP and Oracle EPM Cloud for ‘life of field’ and ‘liquidity’ planning in 2023.

The Accounting and FP&A teams needed a finance tool to analyse and report a data set from multiple systems in their required, defined format. Data included actual financial data from SAP, forecast financial data and Actual/Forecast non-financial data.

 NEO’s current Oracle EPM subscription included an unused Financials Module, which provided the perfect opportunity to create a solution for internal management reporting and analysis, monthly forecasting and external statutory reporting within the already implemented Oracle EPM platform.

Project Objectives

  • Implement an accessible platform to facilitate business analysis
  • Implement hierarchies that allow drilling up and drilling down
  • Flow actuals from the SAP accounting system
  • Excel integration via Smart View for report writing flexibility
  • Leverage NEO Energy’s investment in Oracle EPM Cloud

What we did

Analysed

Conducted design workshops, reviewed existing process, and captured NEO’s reporting and financial forecasting requirements.

Designed

Documented and captured system design specification in a series of remote and face to face workshop sessions with the NEO team to understand the current process.

“They constantly challenged us to be as smart as possible with the tool and to incorporate automation to improve efficiency and save time”

Simon Tweedie – Corporate Controller at NEO

Built

Built a financial reporting, planning and analysis solution using Oracle’s best practice template including a combination of standard and custom dimensions.

Created an integration to the latest version of SAP in the cloud (NEO S/4 HANA Public Cloud) to populate actual data in the solution. The new integration is automated as part of the month end close schedule and can be run on-demand as required.

Wrote core reports using standard Oracle Financials Report Tool (EPM platform) and bespoke Excel Smart View templates, provide automated cashflow reporting, version control and the ability to archive versions within the application.

Developed solutions, using web Forms and Excel via Oracle SmartView, for the automated loading of Forecast & Budget financial data and Actual/Forecast/Budget non-financial data.

Tested

Conducted end to end integration testing and training for admin and superusers.

Ran user acceptance testing with trained admin and superusers, obtaining their signoff of the solution.

“GK worked hard to foster a more collaborative relationship than what we have seen from other service providers in the past, we have been able to work well together as a team to deliver the best product for the company”

Simon Tweedie – Corporate Controller at NEO

Deployed

Provided additional training to users, superusers and system administrators in use of the solution and in respect of system maintenance tasks and user report building functionality.

Made the system live on-time and on-budget and provided hypercare to users during go-live with on-site and remote support.

The team were incredibly responsive throughout the project, I couldn’t have asked for more in the overall delivery”

Simon Tweedie – Corporate Controller at NEO

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