Category: Uncategorized

FatLife blog: Miia tells us what it was like to be part of Fatman’s trainee program

Fatman’s Customer Experience Trainee program started in the beginning of May 2022 when Fatman selected two trainees for the program. Miia Syrjä was one of them and we are really happy that she decided to stay with us after the trainee program and started as a Project Specialist in January 2023. Fatman has plans to develop the trainee program in the future and hire more young talent to the Fatman family.

Tell us a little about yourself. Where have you studied or worked previously, and what are your interests?

My background is in the events industry, where I worked for a bit over a decade. I’ve always been interested in project management but also more broadly in process and business development, and at some point, I started to long for a project with a longer life cycle than the days/weeks/couple of months that they tend to last with events. This led me to Business IT studies at Haaga-Helia, where I was able to attend the classes very flexibly while still working full-time.

As for personal interests, I think it’s easiest to describe through what kind of gifts I’d like to get: Any kind of experience (immersive theater, escape room, crafts class) or toys and gadgets any 8-year-old would want. Like Legos. Or robots. Ooh, or science and magic kits! To balance out my hyperactive inner life, I like to do different kinds of circus and flow arts like poi spinning and hoop dancing.

Fatman Miia Syrja

Why did you choose Fatman and specially why did you choose to apply for this trainee position?

I was looking for my first job in IT, a place where I could do my internship – and preferably my thesis – and came across Fatman’s ad through Haaga-Helia job teaser. The description seemed intriguing and included all the things that interest me. Also, the amazing video starring our CEO Ossi really hit home with all the supercool effects and elegant style. I applied immediately after seeing it.

So, what is it like to work at Fatman? Tell us about your normal working day as a trainee and what were the most interesting tasks? 

The first few weeks were a typical information flood, but the well-structured onboarding plan and the supportive atmosphere helped to stay onboard. The first few months we focused heavily on learning all about our product, Frame and in general Fatman processes.

Beginning of the Fatlife

The average day during the trainee period would include sitting down with one of our Product Owners to go through the current Helpdesk issues, attending internal and external project meetings and creating simple development tasks to Jira. The more we learned about the product and processes, the more we were able to start investigating, solving, and answering the user issues and customer requests independently.

The best tasks were the ones where I was able to figure out something on my own for the first time, or where I noticed that some logic that felt impossible to comprehend before, finally made sense!

Were you able to utilize the experience you have gained during your studies, did they prepare you for the working life and work culture?

There definitely has been some things that I remember reading about but had no previous real-life experience of, besides school projects. It has been really interesting to see for example how agile and scrum methods are followed in our two week sprints, and on the other hand how the customers operate in the traditional waterfall project management ways. In addition to school project courses, I feel I’ve also been able to utilize my prior experience quite nicely. Customer support and project management in different fields doesn’t differ all that much – in the end it’s always about people and communication.

Another difference I’d like to point out with school projects and working as Fatman Trainee is the offered guidance and support. At school most or all the course tasks were always self-guided and on your own responsibility, as there are no superiors or managers. Teachers are of course there to help, but there’s no one supervising your progress on a personal level. As a trainee it was a nice experience to be able to focus on the task at hand, and not worry too much about managing your own workload and thinking of what tasks should get done. I felt the trainee-period was more learning than result oriented, which was very motivating and reassuring.

Business applications

What is your role at Fatman after the Trainee program? Did those experiences and tasks during the trainee program effected on the role you got?

During the trainee period we had weekly check-up discussions with Jarno, our CE-team supervisor. The topic of possible future roles was brought up quite early on in these 1-on-1 meetings, and so it was possible to already focus some of the trainee tasks based on sparked interests and aspirations.

I am one of those people who aren’t afraid to admit I’m (just a bit of) an excel-enthusiast, so when I learned about Frame Lease management and IFRS 16, it immediately piqued my curiosity. After completing the roller coaster of “Fatman IFRS 16 Math classes” I was still onboard and determined to continue with the Fatlife. Now I work as a Project Specialist, assisting with customer feature sales and projects, and specializing in IFRS 16 implementations.

What are your expectations for the future?

I’ve always liked to work in between the technical team and the customer, making sure that the customers’ needs are understood correctly and that the delivering team has all the information and tools to make it happen. In the field of software development, I would want to expand this towards user experience and service design, to deepen my understanding of customers and end users.

On the other hand, it is also important for me to be able to develop the surrounding work culture and processes, and to drive meaningful change where needed. I see Fatman as a place where all these things are possible, and where I (or anyone really) can try out different kinds of paths and responsibilities quite flexibly. 

What advice do you have for those people who are starting their careers and looking for that dream job? 

Whether you are looking for your first job ever, or are someone changing fields, I highly recommend looking at all the different Trainee programs out there to find the right one for you. Many companies have annual or even bi-annual trainee programs with different focus areas and roles. And don’t worry if you’re not yet 100% sure what your dream job would be – Trainee programs are a good opportunity to see what interests you most.

Remember to also document all your school and hobby projects and start building your portfolio from the get-go. If you’re like me, and need some pre-defined projects to get started, join different Hackathons like Junction, Dash Hack or Mimmit koodaa hackathons and workshops. These are also great events to network, share experiences and get inspired!

Fatman reports revenue of EUR 3.2 million and operating profit of EUR 230 000 for FY2021

Fatman’s revenue increased 4 percent to 3.2 million euros in the fiscal year ending 30 November 2021. Operating profit was 230 000 euros. Due to the prolongation of the exceptional circumstances, the company’s number of employees dropped to 26 employees, but new recruitments have already been made at the beginning of 2022.

Despite the exceptional years, Fatman has continued the continuous development of high-quality SaaS services. Customer projects that were postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic have finally started, and from the beginning of 2022, the company has obtained several new customers. The company has also focused heavily on the international sales and marketing of the IFRS 16 Lease Accounting add-on. In previous years Fatman has launched significant R&D projects for the development of IoT applications and the development of these projects continued in 2021.

The market situation and the company’s business are gradually starting to normalize after challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the company revenue decreased due to the pandemic in 2020, the number of employees was also reduced. From the beginning of 2022, the company started to invest in employee recruitment and more skilled labor has been hired in several different units. The normalization of the situation and the return of employees from remote work back to the office has been a big boost to the company’s everyday life.

The company has large significant new customers, international business plans, and continuous development of SaaS services, but the development of products made in cooperation with customers and effective customer service is still visibly among the company’s most important values. In 2021 the average customer satisfaction of satisfaction meter was a tremendous 4,5/5 and for this Fatman is especially grateful to its customers.

IFRS16 blog: Would like to have better solution but worried about continuation of bookings?

Fatman’s Customer Experience Trainee program started in the beginning of May 2022 when Fatman selected two trainees for the program. Miia Syrjä was one of them and we are really happy that she decided to stay with us after the trainee program and started as a Project Specialist in January 2023. Fatman has plans to develop the trainee program in the future and hire more young talent to the Fatman family.

The most typical reason for the change is that reporting is taking too much time and is not reliable enough. As many systems are difficult, the usage is also limited, budgeting is not done at all, and reporting is done at the last minute or late.

But as time passes, our customers are facing a new problem: When doing something with solution X for more than three years, changing the system is seen as a risk as continuation of the reporting cannot be guaranteed – or can it?

Of course, when changing a system one can always explain some discontinuation with the change itself. Typical approach has been that contracts start over at a given date and differences are explained by onboarding the new system. It is also possible to re-do all or the most important contract changes during those years – but there is still a difference due to slight differences in mathematics within different solutions.

The latest innovation in this field is Robotic Process Automation – RPA. Some of our largest new customers, changing from a system linked to SAP or similar larger software environments, having thousands of contracts and a lot of contract changes, have solved this challenge by creating Excel tables of all the bookings done from these contracts during the years using RPA technology.

As Fatman is a top-class software house, we can obviously create scripts that generate corresponding contracts including all changes and thus duplicating calculations from the previous system. This ensures 100% continuation of the balance sheet and bookings. And if these contracts change at a later stage, IFRS16 mathematics as such ensure that even when new balance sheet values are calculated with slightly different formulas, it makes no issues. As change entries in liability side and both change entries and thus new balance on the asset side is proportional to ending balance of previous month, one gets logical and continuous bookings.

Contact us to learn more!

Ossi Talvitie

Blog: Batch processing in Fatman API

As we mentioned in our previous technical blog post https://fatman.fi/en/blog-from-point-to-point-integrations-to-apis-and-beyond/, an API is a modern way of communication between technical systems. In simpler words, it is a language which lets the systems communicate like humans do, with a specified set of commands.

Millions of API requests are happening as we speak. Most modern APIs incorporate REST https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_state_transfer and OpenAPI https://www.openapis.org/about design. In that design an API is a collection of resources, and each resource is a collection of homogeneous objects. A typical set of operations includes retrieving a single object by its identifier, retrieving a mass of objects via some search criteria, creating a new object to the system, or updating an existing object. The system providing the API aims to provide the consistency and security of the operations. To facilitate this, in a standardized API the actions usually operate on one object at a time.

However, with an increased usage of APIs and business demands, some systems need to process large amounts of objects, and sometimes move those between systems. This could happen in industries where a large amount of data is naturally present, such as measured time-series or satellite data. Additionally, some operations might be scheduled to process some target data at a specific later period which grows the size of the final operation. For example, if all the relevant reports are to be recalculated at the end of the month, the final operation could be processing large amounts of data.

One batch to rule them all

In cases like this, the combined cost of the API requests per object processed becomes high, and optimizations become desired. In API systems some code fragments are executed on every request regardless of the object being processed, such as opening a web socket connection between the server and the client or initializing and disposing a connection to the persistent storage (database). Due to that one request adding a thousand objects is significantly more efficient than a thousand requests. Combining several individual object operations into one operation for many objects is called batch processing. With that in mind, it could be beneficial to postpone operations on objects and finally execute them later as a single operation in order to save on the performance costs. This optimization is already performed in various low-level operating system jobs. However, this optimization requires that changes to objects in the system are not required to be effective immediately according to business requirements which is not always the case. Most often the API consumer expects to see the effect of their operation immediately after a success response is returned. So technically it is certainly possible to take advantage of the several known operations in advance and process them as a batch. But what are the implications of such an API architecture? Operating multiple objects at the same time creates several technical challenges.

MODERN SOLUTIONS CREATE MODERN CHALLENGES

Firstly, input validations must be performed on several objects at once, and potentially against each other. For example, if a field has to have a unique value, it has to be checked not only against the existing system in a consistent state, but also against the other parts of the inputs in a batch, keeping in mind the side effects of the transformations such as business rules affecting the incoming field values as the system processes them. Then, if one of the validation fails, should the whole operation be aborted, or should the system attempt to ignore the faulty bit and process the rest of the request, risking the consistency of the outcome? The API design should provide intuitive and consistent handling of these cases so that the consumer integrations are reliable and easy to implement and maintain.

Secondly, implementation of batch operations requires good handling of concurrency safety. In an API if two batch operations happen at the same time concerning a shared object, it becomes a lot more possible that one of the consumers’ operation gets lost without realization than in case of single object handling. Luckily, modern software development frameworks provide well-tested and documented algorithms for implementing safe and secure API operations. By following the API development guidelines and best software practices any developer can reliably incorporate batch processing into their projects.

The way of Fatman

In Fatman API, for the purposes where a large mass of objects needs to be added at the same time, we implement batch operations. They have a separate endpoint and accept an array of objects instead of one object. A validation failure causes no changes being done to the system, and the first failure description returned. If the input contains no errors, the data is durably written into the database and can be retrieved immediately afterwards. The server responses with a successful code 204 and no additional data. Make sure to use batch processing operations where appropriate as it helps to reduce the bandwidth in traffic between the systems.

Aleksandr Makarov, Lead Developer

Blog: Facilities directors always make the same mistake when buying software

Request for proposal (RFP) is a document that describes a project and announces it for bidding. Any qualified company can write a proposal based on the RFP document and submit it. Then the proposals are evaluated, and one company is selected to complete the project. This all sounds very simple and sometimes it really is, you describe what needs to be done and someone says how much it costs. However, there are many situations where RFP as a process is very troublesome and since we are a software company, I will try to explain why it is bad in software projects.

Car buying seems easy…

Let’s do a simple exercise of doing an RFP for a car. You write a list of attributes you need, and you send it out into the world. In few weeks you will end up with 100 replies from different car dealerships with what they think is a perfect car for you. Now you have a problem of picking the best one, but luckily for you, your friend Seppo is a car expert and has volunteered to do the job for you, assuming you will provide him some nutrition. Before Seppo starts the work, you tell him your budget is 20 000 euros and not a cent more. Seppo, being a reasonable person, sorts the proposals by price and throws all the proposals over your budget into the trash. Then he will select a best combination of mileage, size, model, and whatever other reason he sees fit. In the end you will have few options and probably select the one that is cheapest or looks the coolest.

…but you shouldn’t buy software the same way

Next day you take your new car and drive to the office, where your boss tells you that the company has identified a need to replace maintenance resource planning software and you’re in charge of the project. You collect your colleagues that use the current software, sit down with them, and write a list of needs. These needs will then form an RFP document that you will send to 5-10 companies that specialize in this kind of software.

Now, those companies need to review your long list of needs and make a choice. First choice is, should they even bother spending hours upon hours on replying, when they know that most RFPs are won based on the price, not the quality of the work. If they would actually want to win and think cheapest has the highest odds of doing so, they will need to choose what is the least they can offer that will still make the product viable. Do you want the software providers to go through all your needs and think of the cheapest solution to each one, or do you want them to identify your most critical needs and offer the best possible solution? In addition to the above, questions in RFP are just begging to be answered yes.

Here are few examples of maintenance task requirements from an actual RFP material:

  • Simple user interface / process for maintenance partners and personnel
  • Structure and clear processes to minimize the time spent and to support maintenance and unit managers
  • Acceptance process flows where relevant

With questions like this I often ask myself, do the buyers really know what they need? Many of the requirements are more of an opinion rather than an actual description of needs. All the relevant software on the market has these functionalities and any trained salesperson can answer yes and provide you with an ambiguous description of the functionality. Follow up round and discussion will of course clear some of the issues, but at that point you might have already dropped the perfect software provider for you.

Getting a new software has connections to multiple groups of people and processes, which usually makes the solutions customized and complex. It is not as simple as buying a car and asking your friend to help to choose the right one. It is a costly and necessary process where you need to evaluate your needs with experts in the field, and then choose the correct partner for the project.

Are you looking for the cheapest software or the best processes?

Even in our daily lives, we rarely choose the cheapest solution for something important. In the United States, for example, the public sector is forced to use Qualifications-Based Selection (QBS) for engineering projects, where the price is not considered in the initial selection. In QBS, the potential partners are evaluated based on their merits and expertise. Only at the last stage the price is considered and cheapest doesn’t always win.

I know that selecting a software provider might not seem as important as selecting a bridge builder for the public sector, but how important it is for you and your company?

Maxim Lehtinen, Project manager

Blog: Maintenance operations of 2020s rely of efficient data collection, processing, and utilization – but most companies are still stuck in the past

Ever since I started working at Fatman back in 2018, I’ve been amazed by the fact that maintenance operations of basically all major companies are still heavily based on human-generated triggers. It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking to large industrial companies, machine builders, commercial real estate companies, or maintenance service providers, a vast majority of actions around preventive and reactive maintenance operations seem to be completely isolated from the available data.

Let’s take a simple example: A person enters an office during a warm summer day and realizes immediately that air conditioning is not working properly. She reports her findings to the property manager who creates a work order to the maintenance service company. Maintenance service company sends their employee to check out the situation. Serviceman notices that a specific component is broken and orders a spare part from the supplier of the device. Supplier delivers the spare part, and the serviceman finally fixes the air conditioning system.

How long does this process take? Couple of days? A week? Longer?

During this time, the people working in the office are frustrated by the subpar working conditions and the seemingly long response time from the maintenance provider. Property manager gets negative feedback from the tenant and potentially bad publicity for the whole building. And even the maintenance company, who has done everything to solve the problem as fast as possible, might see its brand image take a hit due to factors it has no control over.

Preventive maintenance tasks often seen as easiest way to limit risk of unexpected failures

How to avoid this situation? Traditionally many companies have tackled this problem by planning preventive maintenance tasks that limit the risk of key components breaking down. Changing a component e.g. once a year “just to be safe” is really typical approach that does in fact lower the risks but also often creates extra work for the maintenance company and unnecessary costs for the client.

In this simple example, the harm caused by the unexpected problems is still relatively small. However, think e.g. what the impact of a critical machinery being out of order could be for an industrial company. Production line being down for several days might have a significant effect on the output and major financial implications for the company. Because of this, many large corporations spend a lot of money to proactively maintain the key components of their machines and devices even if there would not be a real need for this work.

Data-driven property management tackles these problems without generating unnecessary costs

We at Fatman feel that the correct solution for this scenario can be divided into four steps:

  • Step 1: Systematic and efficient data collection
  • Step 2: Data structuring and analysis
  • Step 3: Forecasting upcoming needs
  • Step 4: Optimizing use of resources

Our approach to data-driven property management takes into consideration the needs of all the above-mentioned segments (industrial companies, machine builders, commercial real estate companies, maintenance service providers). Regardless of the use case, some or all of these steps can be implemented efficiently to tackle the problems described before.

Going back to the simple example. If the company would be using our services to collect real-time data from the air conditioning system, they could 1) react fast to the immediate problem, and 2) analyze what has happened and why. Through systematic data collection, the serviceman would also know beforehand which component is broken and take the right spare part with him when visiting the site. This kind of monitoring of critical components also enables the service company to optimize their stock levels of the most important spare parts.

These steps, often labeled as descriptive analytics, form the basis for the next step where we use this data in our forecasting algorithms to define what might happen in the future. This predictive analytics work is what we do prevent a situation where the machine breaks down unexpectedly and reactive maintenance with potentially long response times is initiated.

In addition, we can take this process even further by providing prescriptive analytics services that generate actionable items (such as work orders) that tell who should do what, where and when. These solutions can be used to optimize e.g. the use of resources, task management or spare part supply. In our example this could mean that we calculate which serviceman should go to the office to replace the component that is expected to break in couple of weeks. Then we would send him an automatic work order that tells where he needs to go, when he needs to go, and what he needs to do. Interesting information on this topic can be found at https://www.gurobi.com/resources/prescriptive-analytics/.

What next?

If you feel your company is still doing things the old-fashioned way and would like to modernize your maintenance operations, please contact us at sales@fatman.fi to learn more about what can be done with a ready-made set of solutions. We are happy to discuss more about your actual needs and concrete use cases to find the way to make your maintenance operations more efficient without increasing the risks involved.

Jarno Koskinen

CCO, Fatman

Blog: From point-to-point integrations to APIs and beyond

This is not the first post about API technology, and how superior it is in comparison to preceding P2Ps in their many forms, but it certainly will not be the last either. Whether you are thinking the terms point-to-point, peer-to-peer, business-to-business, using FTP/SFTP, servers and clients or no servers or clients, for the sake of clarity, let’s call them all P2P- it’s what they do.

Integrations between software systems have been necessary approximately one day after two different professional software products were purchased by a customer.

 Even if the term was coined already in 1940s, and implementation began in 1970s, the real surge of API technology used in business has honestly happened as late as the last decade. Before APIs, the typical solution for an integration need was P2P.

For the past decade, the known webverse has been buzzing about APIs being the best and only viable way to build integrations. And quite rightly so, for a good reason. However, let’s not unnecessarily bash P2P integrations, they were great! Relatively easy to build, test and as long as you did not need to manage many of them, easy to maintain. But as your organization and the web of integrations gets bigger… it becomes a nightmare to upkeep. Two issues pop up every time the network starts to expand: “Hand coding” and “Rigidity”. Not to forget security issues too.

let’s not unnecessarily bash P2P integrations, they were great! Relatively easy to build, test and as long as you did not need to manage many of them, easy to maintain. But as your organization and the web of integrations gets bigger… it becomes a nightmare to upkeep.

Instead of a rigid bridge between two points, and yet another bridge for a 3rd party, any API is rather a building block to consume the data you need. And with a combination of available building blocks, any consumer can very flexibly make changes to the data they need to use without dabbling with the pre-agreed content of a P2P.

In terms of data integration, the last decade or so has proven that APIs are the most effective and secure way to connect data, applications, and devices. As all industries and businesses venture deeper into digitalization, old P2Ps are gradually, but surely, being replaced with APIs.

What have we done about it?

Fatman API provides a powerful, convenient, and secure Web service API for interacting with Fatman Frame Platform. For your convenience, we offer an API interface in a web portal, from which API consumers can easily build their calls for their customers. Access is granted & controlled thru a secure API key.

Whether you want to run your business in your own ERP and show results to your customer using Frame, or as a Frame db owner use data from other systems, our productized APIs are waiting to make your life easier. In our portal, you will find APIs (the building blocks, as stated earlier) necessary to run your business with corresponding Frame modules:

  • Basic registers for basic Site, Buildings, Tenants etc. related data
  • Service requests
  • Maintenance tasks
  • Purchase orders
  • Devices
  • Electricity, heat, and water consumption
  • Rental contracts

As a Frame user, or a database owner, if you recognize yourself at either end of the data pipeline, please don’t hesitate to contact us at sales@fatman.fi, and let’s get you connected!

And finally…

As always, progress is inevitable. Currently REST rules, being the common and largest framework for business uses. But one must keep one eye on the horizon. gRPC and GraphQL, created by web’s giants, are relatively new and growing. If they succeed in gaining the public trust and filling the needs of various industries, I have a feeling I will be writing this same blog, but with a different title.

Harri Ståhle, Product Owner

Fatman releases FY2020 results and reveals major R&D projects on IoT applications

Fatman’s revenue increased 4 percent to 3.2 million euros in the fiscal year ending 30 November 2021. Operating profit was 230 000 euros. Due to the prolongation of the exceptional circumstances, the company’s number of employees dropped to 26 employees, but new recruitments have already been made at the beginning of 2022.

According to the company management, several major customer projects that were originally planned for 2020 were postponed due to financial uncertainty and unusual working environment caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Market environment and Fatman’s business are slowly expected to return to normal during 2021, but there is still a lot of uncertainty due to the prolonged pandemic. The estimated impact of COVID-19 to Fatman’s annual revenue was approx. 25% in 2020.

Despite of an extremely challenging business environment, the continuous business has remained stable and Fatman has been producing high quality SaaS services with most of the team working remotely since April 2020. Last year, the company also started major R&D projects in the field of IoT applications with an aim to push the market towards a direction where data from different devices is systematically collected and analyzed to define WHO should do WHAT, WHERE and WHEN.

Under this concept, Fatman has introduced the first solutions where large data sets are collected and structured, forecasting algorithms are used to define probable future events, and task optimization is done to ensure efficient use of available resources. This work continues in 2021 with an increasing pace.

Blog: McKinsey says only 1% of generated data has ever been analyzed – where do you stand?

Big data and its twin brother analytics have been the business buzzwords already for the last ten to fifteen years and for good reasons. Advances in technology and computing have enabled massive data generation and there is no slowdown in front of us. We have also learned how to put data into a good use.

Whether You are the IT guy trying to convince your boss that analytics is where she should be investing, or the analyst trying to explain pretty much anyone what you do for living, here are few facts about the data we create, how we use it, and how much of it there is will keep us amazed.

Facts about the data:

  • 1.7MB of data was created every second by every person during 2020
  • In the last two years alone, an astonishing 90% of the world’s data has been created
  • 95 million photos and videos are shared every day on Instagram
  • Every day, 306.4 billion emails are sent, and 500 million Tweets are made
  • Machine-generated data accounted for over 40% of internet data in 2020
  • Google processes over 3.5 billion search queries every day
  • Forrester reports that between 60 percent and 73 percent of all data within an enterprise goes unused for analytics
  • McKinsey reports that only 1 percent of generated data has ever been analyzed (and analyses are often conducted as discrete one-offs, nifty experiments, but not much more)

Based on the findings of NewVantage Partners 2020 Big Data and Executive Survey (Fortune 1000)

  • Only 26.8% of firms reported having forged a data-culture
  • Only 37.8% of firms reported that they were data-driven
  • Only 45.1 of firms reported that were now competing on data and analytics
Big data

As you can plainly see just from the numbers, big data or analytics aren´t going anywhere. Neither is the work required to explain them and put them to good use.

Fatman´s latest contribution to the ever-increasing data is related to the IFRS16 contracts. Daily snapshots of all relevant contract information including 200+ datapoints are now available to the Frame customers.

Provided data enables multiple use cases from analytics to daily operations and with the data provided You e.g. are able to:

  • Evaluate potential discount rate changes to lease liabilities and ROU assets
  • Combine contract information to other data sources
  • Visualize data as You like
  • Create dashboards for your management team
  • Be sure that contract data is always up to date

Use cases are not limited to these examples and Fatman refines use cases for You with pleasure. Please contact sales@fatman.fi if you are interested in learning more.

Anssi Tuulivirta, senior development manager

IFRS 16 blog: Third round has started and only the strongest software vendors are still in the game

2018 was a crazy year. All of us who had developed a solution to solve IFRS 16 challenge had meetings with potential customers one after another. All companies were in need and all were in a hurry. As always preparation had started just a bit too late, and the complexity of the issue was underestimated.

At that time there were a lot of different players in the market as there was a new regulation coming that forced large companies to do something – window of opportunity was open. Many wanted to get a share of that market and joined the race by developing their own solution, teaming up with another company, or by selling their expertise to solve this challenge with Excel.

After the initial race had ended and the standard entered into force, the second round started. Many of the solutions failed to deliver even the minimum level – fulfilling the requirements of the standard. This led to a peak in requests in Q2/2019. Companies who had difficulties with their solution started quickly to look for another one. At Fatman this meant that in 2019-2020 we almost doubled the number of customers using our IFRS 16 solution.

Now, when we have two full years of IFRS 16 behind us we can see the third wave starting. There are three different categories of solutions that are frustrating their users:

  • First, there are systems, such as Excel sheets, that are too light and require too much effort from the user. As the number of contracts is growing, changes are happening to the contracts, and in some rare cases, new type of contracts or currencies must be calculated, one sees that Excel starts to be an expensive solution. There are direct and indirect costs to be paid in time used for the actual calculations as well as moving bookings to bookkeeping, consultancy needed for these processes, and the hassle this is causing in audits.
  • Second, there are systems that are not comprehensive nor constantly developing. When the time goes on and more corner cases are happening to the contracts (such as sale-leaseback contracts, impairments, or handling of purchase options and corresponding fixed asset calculations), one starts to need double notes as all exceptions and thus differences between the system and bookkeeping must be documented.
  • Third clear group consists of overcomplicated systems. These are typically ERP suppliers’ own or preferred solutions. These systems are not considering that leasing contracts are not handled in the financial department and/or headquarters. When a system is built for finance department only, one cannot reasonably distribute the use across the organization. However, there are always other people who need to handle these contracts in their work as well and may be the ones negotiating changes to these contracts, budgeting them, ending them, or similar. This leads to unnecessary double work and often errors in reporting.

There is one more trend that affects all these categories: business intelligence (BI) needs. More and more companies would like to see the information from the contracts and IFRS 16 bookings in forecasting and other cross-reporting, and internal reporting is often difficult or impossible. Comprehensive reporting in the software itself is not always sufficient as modern BI work requires combining data from multiple sources.

Fatman Frame is the leading solution for IFRS 16 reporting, and we are constantly developing the software according to trends and needs of the market. Additionally, comprehensive functionality combined with ease of use has always been the leading principles of our solution. Read more about our software https://fatman.fi/en/lease-management/

Hope to see You in our webinars to learn more on what we have been developing lately! Sign up here https://fatman.fi/en/fatman-organizes-webinar-series-to-introduce-simple-solution-for-comprehensive-ifrs-16-reporting/

Fatman organizes webinar series to introduce simple solution for comprehensive IFRS 16 reporting

As the IFRS 16 standard has been valid for more than 2 years by now, many European companies have gained firsthand experience on the effects of the standard on their operations.

During the past few months, several companies have approached us and shared their frustration relating to IFRS 16 reporting. These companies can be divided into two groups:

1. Companies that do not have proper tools and need to do lot of manual work, and

2. Companies that have heavy and rigid systems that are difficult to use

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Our mission of providing an easy-to-use application that is fully compliant with the requirements of the standard has received a vast amount of interest from the above-mentioned companies. Also, the fact that our solution is compatible with any bookkeeping or consolidation system has been seen as a major advantage.

Due to increasing interest from all over Europe, we are hosting a series of webinars to introduce Frame IFRS 16 application to companies that are not yet familiar with our solution.

Fatman participates at 600Minutes Executive Finance virtual conference in Sweden

Organized by Management Events, the conference gives us an opportunity to network with top decision makers and leaders from the finance world in Sweden.

For the event, we have created a video that introduces the key benefits of our IFRS 16 solution. Watch the full video below

 

Read more about the 600Minutes Executive Finance at http://www.managementevents.com/events/2876/600minutes-executive-finance/sweden/