Uniting the finance function with operations is a recurring theme when discussing the power of the Board Decision-Making Platform. Why? Because it is a differentiator for organizations looking to digitally transform the Office of Finance with a solution that:  

• breaks down silos to unify data from across the business 
• overcomes the many issues with spreadsheet-based planning 
• integrates robust planning and analysis capabilities 
• enables What-If scenarios and forecasting 
• provides all the above and more in a single environment. 

In this way, the Office of Finance can fulfill its role as a driver of intelligent decisions that benefit the entire enterprise and not just the finance function. This fully integrated approach provides holistic insight into each activity, allowing the accurate measurement of planning in a proactive and highly flexible system that meets the challenges of a fast-moving market. 

Delos Power and Board 

Delos Power is Italy’s leading operator of photovoltaic (the conversion of light into electricity using semiconducting materials) power stations. They are the second-largest generator of electricity from photovoltaic sources. Delos Power is structured with over 60 companies under the group name and 174 solar power plants to manage.  

To support the company’s growth in a way that is both agile and meets the needs of this highly complex corporate structure, Delos opted for the Board Decision-Making Platform. With Board, the organization looked to integrate its finance area with the operational activities of the solar power plants, led by a collaborative model. This would produce an end-to-end process that spans economic and financial planning and budgeting, reporting and analytics, and the complete financial consolidation cycle. 

The Board platform offers Delos a control tower to oversee daily activities. Operational information and accounting data align in real-time to provide the business a single version of truth for all their data. In this way, finance and operations combine in a unified environment. 

Unification is a common theme of the Board project at Delos Power, providing the company with the foundation to launch a digital transformation initiative that enhances planning. 

Collaborative planning 

The inherent Business Intelligence (BI) environment on Board fully unifies with the financial planning process at Delos. Because the database feeding the process is the same one used for analyses and reporting, the Office of Finance aligns neatly with operations for BI-empowered financial budgeting.  

This alignment enables a collaborative, real-time approach to plan from both the financial and operational elements of the business. In turn, changes are made quickly and intelligently.  

Intelligent communication between the plant monitoring system and Board 

Finance is integrated with the proprietary system Delos uses to monitor and manage their solar power plants, creating synergy and unity between finance, operations, and management control. The monitoring system collects vast amounts of data, around seven billion records in total, so Board must filter out all unnecessary data and deliver only the essential information for operational reporting and analytics, and economic and financial planning and budgeting.  

This intelligent sorting of data gives the teams at Delos an end-to-end standardized approach. Checking whether financial information matches operational information in real-time is now possible, providing critical insight into the performance of each solar power plant. For example, which plant performs best in terms of production and profitability and which performs worst. Or which plants have higher averages of solar radiation based on geographic area. Going one step further, revenue data can be automatically utilized for What-If analyses, adding new capability elements to the process.  

Guiding Financial Consolidation 

Following the planning and analysis process, Delos uses Board to lead financial consolidation activities. Data directly imports from the company’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system; the financial consolidation process integrates with the relevant management records. Board enables Delos to analyze the relationships between the different companies under their corporate structure in a united environment. The entire process ends with the generation of consolidated and sub-consolidated accounts and related reports. 

Transparency across data is vital to undertake the consolidation and close phase properly. The next-level Board Financial Consolidation solution enables this. The collection and approval of the various parts of financial statements, which make up the required documentation, are managed efficiently and thoroughly.  

Case Study: Creating the perfect partnership between operations and finance 

Learn more in this exclusive case study about how Delos Power looked to integrate finance with operations in a model led by collaboration to produce an end-to-end process spanning:  

• economic and financial planning and budgeting 
• reporting and analytics  
• the complete financial consolidation cycle.