How Grupo Viko enhanced business growth by optimising cash flows

Grupo Viko is a group of eight independent companies located in Spain and Mexico dedicated to digital marketing, specialising in e-commerce. The Group has followed a growth strategy combining organic expansion with selective M&A to penetrate new verticals. After a period of consolidation, it has developed a robust group of companies that share not only corporate culture and values, but also a centralised management of their financial processes, including treasury.

Well-known brands include Elogia, ibrands, Tándem, Marketing4ecommerce, Corporate Lab and others, which combine sector-specific activities with cross-cutting marketing and digital content services.

Although they are independent companies, the corporate finance team needed to have consolidated, real-time visibility of their overall liquidity and cash flows in order to detect possible liquidity needs or surpluses in any of the subsidiaries and to be able to act swiftly to cover possible shortfalls with the cash surpluses of others and optimise their liquidity position. This is a monitoring with added complexity as it operates at an international level and in several currencies.

In terms of financial operations, your ERP does not have an automated banking connection, so it takes time to download files to check daily cash flows and carry out bank reconciliation. In addition, before working with Embat's software, financial planning was done manually using Excel, which limited the time horizon to two months due to the amount of resources required to build the projections.

Empowering the strategic role

Viko Group's biggest challenge is to manage eight companies within the group and monitor their movements independently or on a consolidated level to detect in real time, on the one hand, intra-group financing needs and, on the other, investment needs to drive growth. And to do so in an automated way. This frees up financial resources so that the team can spend more time on analytical tasks that support the strategic objectives of the business.

To do this, it requires a global platform that connects to its ERP and allows it to visualise its banking transactions, customised cash flow reporting and systematise the creation of short- and medium-term cash forecasts. In this way, the finance team can instantly and automatically perform bank consolidation and, consequently, make agile financial decisions that help the business grow.

Real time data centralisation and automation thanks to Embat

Embat provides a cloud-connected technology, which is connected to Viko Group's ERP via a bidirectional API. Automated, real-time information is provided on all cash inflows and outflows for each of the companies so that the parent company can have a consolidated and individual snapshot of the cash flow. It provides daily availability, but also short- and medium-term forecasts that help the finance team to make financing and investment decisions at the required timings.

Advantages

• Automation of the multi-country, multi-company and multi-currency bank reconciliation process, with automatic posting to ERP through bi-directional integration via API.
• Instant reading of open positions posted in ERP from customer, supplier and tax settlement portfolios for short term cash visibility.
• Forecasting platform to generate short- and medium-term cash projections.
• Real-time global liquidity aggregation with segmentation by legal entity, business line and reference currency.
• Analysis of more reliable liquidity needs to undertake organic and inorganic expansion plans through scenario planning.
• Agile and customised integration process, led by a team of technology and financial specialists.

Integration of Embat into the operations of the Viko Group

The integration period was dynamic and not very disruptive. Thanks to API connectivity, Embat provides Viko Group's ERP with all bank communications with the corresponding reconciliation performed to automate the posting of entries. The work of the finance team moved from manually creating these entries to a review and verification exercise. Conversely, the ERP informs Embat of open positions, such as future due dates of invoices for collection or payment and tax settlements, among others, to automate cash forecasting.

Embat's collaborative functionality allows for instant connectivity between the financial team and the rest of the business units, so that information flows quickly, providing a true picture in real time of what is happening at a financial level at any given moment, facilitating rapid strategic decision-making.

Viko’s Metrics

• 8 companies in Spain and Mexico: need to centralise data to have a consolidated and real-time view of liquidity.
• 5 hours saved per week: with the possibility of systematising the creation of short and medium-term cash flow forecasts.
• Better management of working capital: thanks to the detection of liquidity needs or surpluses in subsidiaries.