Case Study
How Automation Gives Petco One-Click Fixed Assets Efficiency
IN THIS ARTICLE
Challenge: A high volume of fixed asset data that requires manual transformation
Solution: Automation to streamline the entire fixed assets process
Results: Time savings and better controls over fixed assets data
As a national pet supply and wellness provider with more than 1,500 physical locations across all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and Mexico, Petco has a lot of asset data to manage. Petco’s accounting department has used Bloomberg Tax Fixed Assets to manage and account for those assets since 2011, but it was the decision to incorporate automation into their system in 2022 that drastically improved their overall fixed assets process.
Challenge: A high volume of fixed asset data that requires manual transformation
Petco’s accounting team’s process was labor intensive – they were spending time manually adjusting and adding data during the transfer from their ERP system to their Bloomberg Tax Fixed Assets software.
“We were having to run multiple different files out of our ERP side,” said Jeffrey Hunter, senior manager of lease, fixed asset, and payroll accounting at Petco. “They would come out in a .dat format that we had to convert into Excel.”
Hunter outlined the process of manually adding information for fields that weren’t in the ERP system, converting the data back to a CSV file, saving it to networks, then importing it to the fixed assets system – a process that was both time-consuming and headache inducing.
Solution: Automation to streamline the entire fixed assets process
When Petco decided to make the transition to a new ERP system, the team jumped at the opportunity to rethink their process from the perspective of how to improve it, not just replicate it.
“We felt like it was a good time to look at our end-to-end process and see where it might make sense to do a little more work upfront that would save us a lot of time on the back end,” Hunter said.
Working with the Bloomberg Tax Professional Services team to introduce automation into their process was quick and painless – the team kept things moving with a 30-60-minute touchpoint meeting once a week until the implementation was complete. And the end result was a much simpler and faster process for the whole team.
“Now when we send information from our ERP system over to Bloomberg Tax, all of the data is automatically converted,” Hunter said. “The files go straight to an SFTP site, they automatically get pulled in, all of the additional fields are added, and any kind of additional adjustment loads are automatically created.”
A final review step helps ensure data accuracy before it’s committed.
“Once we’re good, we click the button, then it’s done.”
This one-click functionality significantly reduced manual intervention, control risks, and the amount of time spent managing and cleaning data.
“A lot of the work that we were doing manually is pretty much done with a click of the button now.”
Results: Time savings and better controls over fixed assets data
The automated process eliminated the need for extensive manual data manipulation and reduced the time spent on audit and SOX compliance activities. “A lot of the work that we were doing manually is pretty much done with a click of the button now,” Hunter said.
Seizing on the opportunity presented by the ERP system migration meant spending some time re-evaluating their overall process, as well as deeply analyzing their data, both of which paid off long term.
The investment in automation technology was quickly offset by the time and resource savings achieved through the streamlined process, plus the peace of mind offered by reducing manual data manipulation.
“I’ve compared the savings we’ve gotten after the fact to the initial upfront investment, and it pays off in no time,” Hunter said. “It’s not only saving time on the audit and SOX side, but it’s also saving time from a strictly data input perspective.”
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