In the past, N&M used to provide accounting and tax services for Japan-based international businesses with a local accounting system. The process of report translation was a must as the system only supported the Japanese language.+

According to a partner at N&M, Mr. Shinya Nishi, most of their clients, if not all, would require the reports be presented in English.  

Some clients would even request N&M to input data in their own preferred system – that led to a situation of the N&M team having had to work with as many as 10 different systems at one point. It required a lot time for the staff to learn to use a specific system, and job swapping was impossible as no two systems were the same. “We must break down such data silos and achieve more operational flexibility,” Mr. Nishi commented.

The solution was GLASIAOUS. “The goal was to eliminate duplication of effort and non-value-added manual processes. We were looking for growth and efficiency,” said Mr. Nishi. “We had checked out different international vendors with English functionality, but none complied with the Japanese tax rules, though. We would, therefore, still have to perform certain tasks manually. It was 2015 when we were introduced to B-EN-G’s GLASIAOUS, and learned about the multi-language, multi-currency Cloud accounting system. We decided to give it a go.”

N&M first launched the GLASIAOUS services for new clients only. The accounting firm has since been working on transitioning all clients to GLASIAOUS unless otherwise specified. The total number of subscriptions to N&M’s GLASIAOUS services has reached 100.

Improved efficiency is one of the most significant benefits brought to N&M by GLASIAOUS. Clients often request financial statements in various formats. It could take at least a couple of hours for each client report depending on the complexity of the format. With GLASIAOUS, the job can now be dealt with in about 10 minutes. All that’s left to do for N&M is to notify the client the reports are ready via e-mail.

“Clients seldom would be able to submit the required data for reporting in one go,” said Mr. Nishi. “Our team must re-do the financial reports every time they sent us additional expenses and sales data. Thanks to GLASIAOUS, we can now simply make necessary modifications to the reports online as our clients are allowed real time access to the updated data.”

“GLASIAOUS has enabled us to share the workload of account payables and receivables data entry that we could never manage to do before,” said Mr. Takita Mitsuhiro, a senior staff in N&M’s international tax group. “The standardized operation platform has improved productivity greatly. We used to deploy a five-man team at the beginning of each month, working very long hours, to compile the reports. We can now get the same job done with three staff members with minimal overtime involved.”

The benefits presented by GLASIAOUS are immense. “The old system that we had did not support foreign currency items. With the GLASIAOUS multi-currency solution, we no longer have to do the calculation manually for data entry,” added Mr. Takita. “The new system is easy to use and intuitive once the initial setting is fixed. Our people have definitely agreed that GLASIAOUS surpasses the previous local systems. The swift response from the B-EN-G help desk also gives us peace of mind when we encounter any technical issues. We are very satisfied with the service quality.”