ESL Gaming Chooses Planful To Accelerate and Modernize Financial Performance Management Efforts

ESL Gaming GmbH brings millions of players and fans together for esports, gaming tournaments, leagues, and events across the globe. Based in Cologne, Germany, and with offices and studios worldwide, ESL was acquired in 2022 and needed to transition from tools used by its prior parent company to a new finance and accounting solution. After evaluating several options and with limited time to transition, ESL chose Planful as the foundation for its financial performance management efforts.

ESL had been running its monthly close and consolidation processes on its parent company’s SAP S/4HANA and IBM Cognos tools. But, once it was acquired in 2022, it had to work quickly to transition to its own financial performance management solution.

“When we started our search, we wanted something better than what we were using previously because we knew there had to be a better way,” recalled Julia Rausch, Group Accountant at ESL. “We started looking for a full-circle solution that we could use for consolidations and control.

ESL formed a cross-functional team to evaluate potential solutions, with Accounting, IT, and others involved in the selection process. Key criteria included flexibility to match ESL’s unique needs, an intuitive platform for a speedy rollout, and the ability for the finance and accounting teams to manage the entire solution with minimal IT support. Also critical was the vendor’s responsiveness, willingness to learn the company’s needs, and engagement as ESL had questions.

After evaluating a number of other solutions, ESL chose Planful for its user-friendliness and flexibility and that the platform could be supported with little outside help.

“What stood out about Planful was how flexible and customizable it was,” Julia explained. “We saw that other systems were pretty static and inflexible, and they forced you to stick to the reports they had. Planful was more user-friendly. ”
Julia added that the selection team also felt comfortable and confident working with Planful’s implementation team based on their experiences during the selection process.

“With Planful, we always got a good, detailed response quickly when we had questions,” added Julia. “With other vendors the quality of responses was not as good.”

Once Julia and the team selected Planful, ESL quickly got to work since access to its prior close and consolidation software was set to expire within a few months. In a deployment that took less than a quarter and Julia described as “smooth,” ESL loaded historical data into Planful, worked with Planful’s implementation team to manage some tricky transactional currency figures, and easily transferred its accounting hierarchies from Cognos to Planful.

“We never missed a reporting deadline as we transitioned to Planful because it set us up for success,” Julia said. “When we needed help, Planful’s response was always fast. For projects like this, you’re always curious to see if the high level of attention during the sales process continues once you’re a customer. Planful definitely proved that it is just as responsive, even today.”

Two-plus years after selecting Planful, ESL continues to enjoy accelerated month-end closes. The move to Planful also highlighted opportunities to implement process improvements and add Planful automation to speed monthly reporting, improve data transfers, and ease compliance audits.

“We used to deliver consolidated figures by working day nine, and with Planful, we’re now reporting on day five,” said Julia. “Creating the management reports, we need then takes as little as one day for the balance sheet, P&L, cash flow statement, and statement in changes in equity — that’s down from three days previously. We can also do our monthly reporting in just one day, which is great. With Cognos, it took longer and was quite error-prone.”

Julia added that data transfers between ESL’s SAP and NetSuite systems and Planful are also incredibly quick, with just two clicks required to move data in a matter of minutes. For audits, specific data templates and custom company codes for elimination postings were implemented to help simplify and explain the consolidation process to auditors. Planful’s automated audit trails enable ESL to deliver reports for all journal entries so auditors have a clear view of consolidations, eliminations, and more.

Today, ESL works from Planful’s flexible, intuitive, and finance-owned financial performance management solution as it searches for even more opportunities for growth and agility.

“Planful will be a great help when we need to adjust hierarchy structures or, as we’re already considering, a change or update of our chart of accounts,” Julia added. “We’ve had such a great experience so far. We’re very happy with our choice, Planful, especially since we can report so quickly and act autonomously when we need to make changes.”