Leaf and Seven Corners Travel Insurance – How the Project Started
Leaf assisted Seven Corners by applying the concept of a contribution margin financial measurement in the Sage Intacct Cloud Accounting system. To achieve this, Leaf advisors reviewed the various elements of the contribution margin formula. In this advisory role, Leaf discussed how each of the variables within the contribution margin reporting calculation impacted its outcome. Leaf advisors collaborated with the Seven Corners Finance and the Seven Corners IT departments to develop a custom integration between their Sage Intacct system to their AXIS system which holds statistical information as well as revenue and cost of sales information used in the company’s contribution analysis.
By actively listening to the client, Leaf gained a deep understanding of how the contribution margin results would impact decisions and direction within Seven Corners. Leaf educated and assisted with the design and use of dimensions through parent/child and dimensional groups as building blocks to aggregating financial data to aid in the computation of the contribution margin.
Leaf and Seven Corners concentrated on the use of Sage Intacct’s Financial Reporting system and its ability to use simple and complex formulary calculations to bring together dimensionally tagged financial data. This allowed Seven Corners to complete the analysis of the series of insurance products and services to determine its contribution allocation to the company’s profit margin.
Seven Corners was open to the advisory role and guidance taken on by Leaf, and as a result, Seven Corners is using their ERP system in valuable ways – transcending their insight into what contributes to the overall success of the company. What follows is their success story as written by Janna Broyles, Vice President of Finance and Controller. Enjoy!
Seven Corners – Who We Are
Seven Corners is a service-focused travel insurance and benefit management company that serves a global market. We offer customized travel insurance solutions, such as trip insurance, travel medical insurance, student travel insurance and visitor insurance and 24/7 emergency medical and travel assistance service for individuals and groups. Seven Corners also administers health care benefits for select U.S. government programs such as the U.S. Department of State and the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Our mission is to protect travelers while building loyal customers, inspiring our team members, and driving value for our partners. We exist to be the difference by providing health, safety, and security for people away from home. The heart of our company is our core values: customers come first, we innovate, we do the right thing, we own the solution, and we are precise.
Seven Corners Finance – What We Have Done to Live Our Core Values
Five years ago, the accounting and finance function at Seven Corners was struggling, to put it lightly. We had 15 team members, few internal controls, varying accuracy, and a 30-day close cycle. Leadership had low visibility into the financial performance due to the timing of close, Microsoft Excel was overused, and reconciliations were not current. We weren’t living out our company’s core values. Overtime and the feeling of being underwater was all too prevalent, and stress was severely hurting our team’s culture. We had no time to invest in additional project work because it was all we could do to keep up with daily requirements. We needed help, and we needed help quickly.
Sage Intacct was the answer.
Today, we have a four-day close, an 83% reduction from five years ago. We’ve modernized our accounts payable function through a direct connection with Bill.com, improved our corporate credit card process through a direct connection with Tallie, automated approximately 60 bank reconciliations through Intacct, enhanced reporting by building reports and dashboards, and implemented Sage Intacct Planning, which has greatly enhanced and streamlined our budgeting and forecasting process.
By adding efficiency and internal controls into our day-to-day, we have not only increased our accuracy, but also saved the company money. Our leadership trusts the financial results that we share monthly, which is invaluable. The team of nine, a 40% reduction from five years ago and a savings of $545K annually, works little to no overtime, is current with their workload, is happy and working on projects galore with their free time and adding value to the company.
The work described above was all done prior to 12 months ago, when the Finance team embarked on one of the biggest projects to date . . . a contribution margin analysis. Contribution margin allowed us to individually measure the ability of each product’s revenue to exceed its associated variable and fixed costs. We needed to determine how each of our products impacted company profitability so that decisions around those products could turn around years of unprofitable results. The initial contribution margin created was done back in 2019 with Excel, and it was difficult to update and prone to error. By using Sage Intacct, we modernized contribution margin by using new dimensions, account groups and custom fields to create dimension groups for our revenue entries (now done via API), implemented dynamic allocations to allocate service and acquisition costs across the revenue streams by using statistical accounts, and built dashboards and reporting that is available at a click of a button. As soon as our four-day close is complete, we have now achieved with the use of Sage Intacct a contribution margin that gives us a profitability by product, by channel, by agent, etc. We went from having contribution margin one time per year, to having it monthly with no effort.
Financial Operations Transformed at Seven Corners
Sage Intacct allowed Seven Corners to transform its financial operations by delivering the best it has in nearly 30 years. From five years ago to today, there is no comparison. The flexibility of Sage Intacct and its robust reporting has helped us maximize the use of the system and has revealed information that was otherwise concealed or hidden from decision makers’ view, which has been invaluable to the company.
Through innovation, Seven Corners has completely transformed our financial operations and our business. Highlighted results using Sage Intacct include:
- Improved the culture and work life of the Finance team, which is immeasurable
- Reduced our close by 83%, from 30 to four days
- Saved the company $545K annually due to efficiencies gained with automation
- Improved accuracy and for five years running, no errors during our annual financial statement audit (from 10-15+ findings in prior years)
- Improved internal controls, which has protected the company’s assets with approval processes and being current with reconciliations
- Gained visibility into our products and results that help leadership make timely decisions
- Reduced the time to complete our annual budget by 60 days, by implementing Sage Intacct Planning