Dixons pick Frango system for compliance
Software company Frango has won a contract to supply retail group Dixons with a corporate performance management system that deals with IAS compliance, financial reporting, planning and analysis.
The package, called Frango Controller, gathers and consolidates data automatically from predetermined sources, such as the general ledgers of Dixons’ divisions and subsidiaries, which should remove the risk of manual error during the consolidation process. The solution was required to deal with the retailer’s increasing production of monthly management accounts, quarterly forecasts, annual budgets and statutory statements.
Simon Davies, group planning and analysis director of Dixons, told Accountancy Age that IAS is very much a ‘current tense’ issue for the group. ‘Given the detailed differences between IAS and current UK GAAP we have undertaken a full blown analysis of the effects and are in the middle of planning the implementation of the new standards,’ he said.
Davies warned other companies that it would be a big mistake to underestimate the time required and volume of work necessary to implement IAS: ‘(Implementation) is not just presentational, shifting the counters around the board a bit, but may affect underlying accounting policies and practices.’
He added that Dixons is currently in a relatively good position to deal with the introduction of IAS – ‘but still has a lot of work to do’.