"The ease of use of BrightAnalytics as administrator is the best I’ve seen. The balance between efficiency, simplicity, and results is perfect.”

Finance made efficient! 

Offering finance as a service to slightly larger Swedish SMEs: that is the mission of consultancy firm SEVR. When more and more of their clients expressed the need for efficient financial planning and analysis, SEVR partnered with BrightAnalytics. Eventually, they also began using it for their own financial reporting. 

“As a consultancy firm, we offer our clients finance as a service,” begins Andreas. “In addition to accounting, recruiting finance professionals, and business intelligence, one of the services our clients can rely on us for is CFO services: our consultants work as part-time CFOs for them. It is from this angle that we increasingly felt the need to make FP&A (financial planning and analysis), consolidation, and reporting in these companies more efficient. There was a desire to reduce the time spent on financial reporting, gain better control and understanding of the numbers from a broader perspective, and effectively communicate these insights with a varied audience. We encountered the same issue within our own organisation.”

Ideal for slightly larger SMEs

Andreas first encountered BrightAnalytics when a client purchased the software for its reporting, budgeting, and consolidation needs. “We implemented BrightAnalytics at the client, and at that time, we hadn’t used it before. It quickly proved to be very suitable for many of our other clients. These are typically medium-sized Swedish SMEs, often with multiple locations, sometimes also abroad, which inherently also requires a consolidation foundation.”

It marked the beginning of a partnership between BrightAnalytics and SEVR. Did Andreas actually compare the software with other solutions on the market? “I’ve been working as a CFO for ten years,” Andreas responds. “So, I’ve seen many solutions and I’m familiar with the market, including Power BI, which we also implement for clients. There are also many local Swedish alternatives, but for me, BrightAnalytics is the best tool. Firstly, because the platform facilitates an efficient setup, making it suitable for financial reporting, budgeting, and consolidation. Moreover, the software allows you to view the numbers from a higher perspective. It’s designed to capture and manage the full complexity of financial processes, especially across multiple locations with possibly several accounting systems to collect data from. The softwares functionality for handling users is easy to use and it gives us a simple and effective way to communicate financial figures and KPIs to varied audiences within the client’s organisation and external parties. Additionally, the user-friendliness of managing BrightAnalytics is among the best I’ve seen. The balance between efficiency, simplicity, and results is perfect. Our clients are highly satisfied and we ourselves spend less time preparing and administering the figures – this gives us more time to spend on providing more valuable services and advisory to our clients.”

Flexible without becoming overly complex

In the past, this was not always the case. SEVR used various approaches to reporting, always tailored to the client’s situation and context. “If someone wants a highly sophisticated environment, for example with many non-financial metrics, then Power BI is a good and sophisticated alternative. However, the major drawback is that maintaining the system is quite administratively expensive. There’s a risk of building a solution that requires substantial ongoing support, both from IT and finance, just to keep it running. More flexibility often means more complexity, requiring more extensive training for users and greater support for administrators. There are not always these resources available for the client and us to support the solution. With BrightAnalytics, it’s completely different as everything operates largely automatically, and the maintenance is provided by BrightAnalytics. It frees both us and our clients from the need to manage such a system. Additionally, the client can be operational within weeks, whereas other solutions often require longer implementation cycles for production, testing, validation, and publishing.

Furthermore, SEVR often utilised dynamic reports for clients: “There are many inexpensive solutions available to connect data, and we would build dynamic reports based on that data,” he explains. “I still consider this a good option for certain use cases. Excel provides flexibility and easy management, but the downside is that it only works efficiently with one or two administrators. Once you scale up and need to involve viewers and users, it becomes complex and inefficient—you start sending files back and forth, making collaboration harder. Therefore, organisation size,  complexity and available resources is a determining factor for me in advising clients. With BrightAnalytics, we now have a solid consolidation and FP&A tool to manage clients without adding unnecessary complexity. The efficiency in gathering data and conducting analyses has significantly improved since we no longer spend as much time collecting data. BrightAnalytics facilitates all of this without sacrificing functionality, which is very reassuring.”

Efficient management of finance

Shortly thereafter, Andreas made the decision to adopt BrightAnalytics at SEVR as well. “We face the same challenges as our clients,” he explains. “Previously, we relied on Power BI to meet these needs, but managing this system internally didn’t align with our commercial strategy. Additionally, working with input data in Power BI added unnecessary complexity. With 12 companies under our management, we required a solution that would streamline FP&A, consolidation, and financial management. BrightAnalytics offered not only these capabilities but also a robust budgeting and forecasting module. As a result, we opted to have our consultants use Power BI for clients who preferred it, while internally leveraging BrightAnalytics. This approach allows our team more time to focus on serving our clients’ best interests.”

He definitely considers himself a satisfied customer. “Our primary goal for ourselves was to reduce administration, and BrightAnalytics has absolutely succeeded in that regard. Moreover, their service and collaboration are excellent. Their support department is becoming more professional. Questions are answered promptly, and there is clearly a wealth of expertise within the team. They have also accumulated extensive knowledge of integrating with Swedish environments, which ensures smooth onboarding for new clients today. Meanwhile, I use the system daily both for SEVR and for clients and have discovered that BrightAnalytics offers more capabilities than initially meets the eye.”