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As a major Cigarette and Tobacco Manufacturing Company, it has large diverse and disperse workforce, which combined with the fact of having products sold worldwide meant that the amount of lease contracts was incredibly large, 16.000+ contracts. As such, this Company represents one of the largest and most relevant implementations of IFRS 16 Technology Solutions in the world.

Qiado has supported this client from the very beginning of the project, before the Go Live in the application system. We started with the Blueprint phase to understand the client´s specific requirements, projected all configuration requirements and SAP prerequisites and could, finally, provide the customer with a operating and functional application tool. Since the implementation of IFRS16 norm, in 01.01.2019, Qiado has had an enormous challenge in integrating all 4 different ERP systems, guaranteeing IFRS16 and ASC842 standards compliance, dealing with different multicultural teams across the world and specially being responsible for a very significant number of lease contracts.

With this, Qiado has provided facility to the customer in terms of management of their leased asset contracts in integration with SAP (asset creation, modification, retirement, month end procedures, asset management module, depreciation in USGAAP standard, financial reports and schedules, etc). Ever since, we have been supporting them for more than a year with AMS (Application Maintenance Service) in post go-live issues. This saves them precious time and promotes efficiency in their daily routine.

After the Go Live, the needs of the client changed and so Qiado has started supporting with other procedures and issues. For example, we have supported the client with 3 application upgrades and are already planning the next one. During AMS, the main activities from Qiado are related to the IFRS16 and USGAPP transition, SLAN configuration, new company code creation, ERP integration, User Accepting Testing, reporting developing  and enhancement. Also, every month end has to be precise and on time, so given the huge number of company codes, contracts and business users, Qiado’s consultants make a big effort to support the client with compliance, transparency and reconciliation deliveries.

Back in 2018 a company working on dairy and farming machinery, with headquarters located in Sweden, decided to use SAP Lease Administration by Nakisa (SLAN), currently known as Nakisa Lease Administration (NLA), to manage their portfolio of lease contracts under IFRS16.

Being a machinery producer, their lease portfolio was highly diversified, including real state, vehicles, forklifts, and other production machinery, distributed between its 18 factories around the world.

Qiado was responsible for the implementation of the tool and for all the processes of contract migration into the system according to client requirements. The project consisted of the following major phases:

• Blueprint and System Architecture

Flying to Sweden, Qiado did a presential kick-off/blueprint with the team leaders from the customer. Meeting each other, sharing first knowledge about the tool, deciding, and collecting the requirements for configuration, and defining a detailed project calendar, all of these tasks were covered in 3 intensive days onsite!

• Configuration, SAP, Workshops, Integration tests, UAT

For 2 months both Qiado and the customer’s team had remote weekly calls to evaluate the project progress, set up connections with SAP and implement SSO, clarify configuration and connection topics, define user roles, perform workshops and training sessions. At the same time, Qiado did the project progress on the configuration side, system settings and workflow, and data logic in order to provide a smooth and friendly user experience.

This phase ended with a second visit to the client headquarters for the UAT, where there was a place for 2 busy days with the client experiencing the system functionalities for the first time, understanding the calculations, accounting logic, and reporting among others.

• Contracts Data Conversion, Upload in the tool, and Validation in QA

Another major phase of this contract was the support provided by Qiado on Contracts Data conversion, meaning the work of review and convert leases portfolio data into the templates for the first upload in NLA, in reference to 1^st of January 2019 when the IFRS entered in force.

Qiado was involved in the entire process, analyzing the data, preparing the files, uploading, and finally in the validation and reconciliation together with the client.

• Transport to Production and Go-Live

At the end of configuration, testing and data upload in the test environment, Qiado was responsible for the transport of each part into production, with the biggest challenges on connections with SAP. Qiado was able to achieve a smooth Go-live meeting the client expectations and the timeline defined for the project, despite some delays due to connections and integration sides.

• Post-Go-Live support

As usual, Qiado provided few weeks of Post Go-Live support, helping the users with their first difficulties with the new tool.

• The Team and the project

From the Qiado side, the team was composed of experts on different matters: accounting, functional and technical consultants, together with the solution architect were able to address in an effective way all the challenges and needs during all phases of the project, during its 5 months.

This project was the first Qiado full implementation end to end, after the participation in many other projects on early adopters of the tool and on bigger size clients where the projects naturally started earlier to get the tool ready at the beginning of 2019.

This long-time customer is a large multinational company with headquarters in Helsinki, Finland that provides paper, wood, and forestry products. This customer has operations in more than 30 countries, which makes it an international and complex environment.

Our main challenge here was connected to the high volume and material number of contracts related to machinery and equipment.

Back in 2018, this customer decided to implement Nakisa Lease Administration (NLA) to support the IFRS16 requirements and disclosures. The main activities performed by Qiado during the project implementation were:

1. Workshops to gather and discuss requirements: Qiado organized several workshops with different customer teams to gather all the requirements, information, and data for the project implementation:

• • System Architecture – Qiado supported the customer in analyzing and defining the connection and integration of all the systems to have an effective and efficient end-to-end IFRS16 process.
  • Accounting flow – Before implementing any system with an impact on the GL accounts, it is crucial to meet up with the accounting team and discuss and define the desired accounting posting logic.
  • Transition method – In IFRS16 projects, it is very important to define at an early stage the desired transition method since this decision will affect the rest of the project. This is also vital for the contract’s data gathering.

2. Master data Configuration: NLA systems have a native integration with SAP however, it is necessary to perform some specific configurations. Qiado supported the gathering of all necessary configuration requirements as well as configuring them in NLA.

3. IFRS16 accounting support: In the initial phase of the project there were several IFRS16 accounting questions. The technical accounting team in Qiado supported this customer in the clarification of those questions guaranteeing a correct interpretation of the standard.

4. Data Migration: This is one of the most challenging phases of system implementations. This customer had to migrate around 2k contracts. Qiado supported the technical migration as well as in the validation of the Liability amounts and IFRS16 calculations.

5. UAT and training: This last phase of the project implementation is very important for the implementation success, and it is essential to have business approval before the Go-live. Qiado supported in training the key users, the application management team, as well as, guaranteeing a smooth UAT.

6. Go-live: Once configuration, testing, and data migration was completed in the QA environment, Qiado was responsible for the transport of each part into the production system. This phase carries great challenges with SAP connections, yet Qiado was able to achieve a smooth Go-live meeting the client expectations and the timeline defined for the project.

Once the project was implemented, our team started supporting this customer on a monthly basis. Qiado now supports this customer in Month End Closing activities, master data updates, reporting needs, among other day-to-day activities.

This project had several challenges such as CPI Global with 6 Index scenarios (mixture between maximum value, minimum value and a factor), 1 ERP system to be integrated, IFRS16 standard compliance. During the implementation the main activities that Qiado supported were the IFRS16 transition, Contract Data Gathering, SLAN configuration, Workshops , Training and User Acceptance Tests, accounting postings, reconciliation IFRS Postings, financial reportings.

As a major African Financial Institution, the Company presented a low volume of lease contracts, that have though very material amounts. Therefore given their praise on financial transparency the project focus on ensuring high compliance standards with clear, integrated and legitimate financial statements.

Qiado has supported this client since the very beginning of the project. It started with the support in Blueprint phase, where it was needed to understand the requirements of the client. It was decided that the client would start with a Hybrid solution (both disconnected and connected functionalities for the same system) and then they would involve S/4HANA. Qiado has then gathered all contract information, managed SLAN configuration and supported the client with Go-Live processes as Nakisa Partner. Even though the Go Live happened after the implementation if IFRS16 norm, in 01.01.2019, Qiado’s consultants have adjusted each inception ROU amount because of different payment frequencies so that they would reflect correctly inception amounts in the capitalization date.

After all the steps and the Go Live, this client had a functional application where they could manage all their contracts correctly and this allowed them to supervise and monitor the leased assets contract progress of all countries they were responsible for. Most of all, they could be compliment and transparent when revealing their financial statements to the public.

At the end of these processes, Qiado consultants also had another big challenge, which was the start of configuration and testing for connecting to S/4HANA. Even though the client decided not to move forward with it, the outcome was still positive and extensions and outcomes can be managed well in the tool.