Written By:

Babak Varjavandi
President and Chief Executive Officer
Nakisa

Our biggest release yet.. But what’s so special about it?

I am first and foremost a technology geek and a product manager. I love using technology to solve complex problems. The last couple of years have been really special to me, I have had the chance to work on something amazing with our Lease Accounting solution, thanks to a great team and my Chief Technology Officer.

Nakisa Lease Administration 5.0, coming in July, is going to take lease accounting to the next level, including a new reporting module, a huge update to our technology and approach to integration, and a ton of new features and enhancements to the core lease accounting and lease administration engine.

We have the luxury of working with some of the most amazing companies and partners including the Big 4 accounting firms, Oracle and SAP, and many industry leaders such Walmart, Nestle, BP, Air France KLM, Pfizer, Bayer, and so many others. We’ve learned so much from them, and I have to admit that they played a key role in our journey to 5.0.

Of course, the initial goal from a product perspective was to meet IFRS 16 and ASC 842 compliance requirements. Many companies have struggled with this challenge as it requires very complex calculations, but with the help of many great partners (and a huge amount of testing in diverse environments with varied use cases) we achieved this compliance milestone with our previous version of Nakisa Lease Administration.

We acknowledge the difficult journey the market has taken to get here and ask the question: “what value can we provide beyond compliance? How can we take all the feedback from our partners and customers and provide a truly innovative solution for lease accounting?”

This question led us to 3 core pillars of innovation:

1. Technology
2. Reporting
3. Lease Accounting and Administration

Technology:

Nakisa is, at its core, a software company that loves to make software. That means that for a release to be truly special to us, it has to include a true technological innovation in our space. 5.0 includes a number of technological innovations and improvements, including:

1. Open source API technology and oData
2. Nakisa Cloud Connector for Oracle
3. Lift & Shift Migration

By opening up our API in the new version, we provide access of the entire functionality of Nakisa Lease Administration to the developer communities. This is huge. This means any developer can write extensions and add any functionality that they need in their favourite language, ie, C#, Java, etc. Let’s look at some sample scenarios:

1. Integrate or extend current connectors with a custom ERP, real-estate, contract and procurement solution
2. Read equipment usage and calculate usage-based rent
3. Create custom reports
4. Build additional addon modules, such as budgeting

Yes, we could build some of these ourselves, but these are only a few examples of many. We know that there is a huge, smart developer community that is intimately familiar with their company needs, and they will come up with innovations on top of our platform that will surprise us all. If you are developer, you know what to do.

Releasing API in the cloud is much more that just activating these function calls for external use, it’s the development of an entire platform. In the cloud, Authentication, Authorization, User Management, the Usage Metrics Collection and Logging of API is a must.

I don’t want to bore you with the details, but this is where Kubernetes played a big role for us in managing API. But we use Kubernetes for much more than that, including deployment, scaling, high availability, load balancing, backups, and so much more.

One more thing; with 5.0 we released our new Oracle Connector. This connector, which allows full integration with Oracle Financial Cloud, was the result a great collaboration with the Oracle product management team. It was then certified and it is now available on the Oracle Cloud Marketplace. What is amazing about this connector is that it was fully developed using Nakisa Lease Administration’s newly released APIs. The connector code will be open sourced, and lets any great java developer to extend its functionality, or use it as a template to build other integration connectors with other ERPs.

If you’re interested to learn more about our partnership you can see our recent press release here and visit our listing on the Oracle Cloud Marketplace here.

Reporting:

5.0 also includes new and updated disclosure reports and adds a brand-new Financial Analysis Reporting Module which will allow our users to slice and dice their lease accounting data and generate custom reports. Some examples of new capabilities provided within the reporting module include:

1. New Mini Financial Statements
2. New Activity Analysis & Control Reports
3. Dashboard Reporting Tool

Lease Accounting and Administration:

For all the excitement of new features and functions, we’ve gathered a ton of feedback from our customer base about what they want to see improved in the solution, and the improvements in this category are primarily a result of the partnership we’ve developed with our customers, and the feedback they give us:

1. Leasing Scheduler for Batch Postings
2. Asset Impairment Support
3. Cost Allocation Functionality

If you’re interested to learn more about the new features and functionalities being introduced in 5.0, stay tuned in the coming weeks as we’re going to release a specific blog to talk about each topic.

If you’re not an existing customer, and you’ve made it this far, I suggest visiting this page to learn more about our solution, or this page to learn about how Walmart used Nakisa to support their lease accounting initiatives.

Nakisa Lease Administration 5.1 is now available. Click here to learn more.