Provantage Media Group, a fast-growing out of home media specialist operating in 15 countries across Africa, uses Caseware to efficiently and cost-effectively manage its financial reporting and audits. Provantage has two Caseware licences, with Smart Sync, Full IFRS and Consol template, SME Pty template, CC template and Probe.
Ruan Burger, Group Finance Executive at Provantage, reports that he has used Caseware solutions since his early days as an Article Clerk around 2008. He introduced Caseware to Provantage when he served as the company’s auditor and later joined Provantage. It was an automatic choice, Mr. Burger says: “As the company grew and expanded into new countries it became necessary to consolidate more and more entities. So, we have been using it for financial statements for years and have never needed to consider an alternative.” Provantage has enjoyed exponential growth – particularly in the last five years, and Mr. Burger says Caseware enables him to manage growing numbers of financial statements efficiently and in line with IFRS reporting standards. “With the growth we have experienced, incorporating normal day to day accounting transactions into our ERP system is more challenging than doing the financial statements on Caseware.
Our entire finance team is comprised of 55 – 60 people across Africa, yet we are still able to get through the statements quite quickly. In terms of cost versus benefit, if we had to set up 50 sets of statements and bring in external consultants, it would take quite some time and cost us a fortune. With Caseware, we are able to be fast, efficient, and cost effective.”
Thanks to Smart Sync, Provantage has the option to collaborate remotely. “With the current environment, we can just work from home, and if our department grows and has more people using the programme, it will certainly add even greater value,” he says.
Mr. Burger notes that another area where Caseware adds value is that because the company’s auditors use it, processes are fast-tracked. “The majority of auditors use Caseware, so we can simply give them access to the server, and they start auditing off it,” he says.
“It’s all about cost controls and efficiencies in business today, and Caseware supports that. If we were ever told we could only retain a handful of solutions, Caseware would be one of them,” Mr. Burger concludes.
