When the original Sage X3 project was scoped in 2016, ERGOMED Group was operating within a complex, international and highly project-driven financial environment.

At the time, the organisation was managing 48 live studies. Contracts could run for two to three years and included a combination of unit-based and milestone-based billing. Project costs were often incurred by one Ergomed entity before being recharged to customers or across other group entities, creating a substantial requirement for intercompany accounting and granular project-cost management.

The finance team needed to match costs and revenue by study, customer and revenue type. It also needed the flexibility to analyse and consolidate project costs in different ways across the group.

These requirements were complicated by several manual and inconsistent processes. Purchase-invoice approvals were handled differently across the organisation, payments required significant manual effort, and high volumes of foreign-currency transactions made bank reconciliation time-consuming. Different entities also used individual mappings to produce standard profit-and-loss and balance-sheet reporting.

The organisation’s objectives included centralising accounting within a shared-service centre in Zagreb, establishing a common chart of accounts across its companies and introducing the new system through a phased country-by-country rollout.