Founded in Finland in 1950, Amer Sports offers a broad portfolio of sporting goods with internationally recognized brands such as Salomon, Arc’teryx, Peak Performance, Precor, Atomic, Suunto, and Wilson. Employing 9,500 people in multiple countries, Amer Sports primarily sells their merchandise via B2B and wholesale channels, but also distribute their goods in a growing number of brand stores, factory outlets, sporting good chains, and via e-commerce.
The Challenge Amer Sports operates a complex leasing scenario. With a dominant SAP ERP, multiple disconnected ERPs, and a lease portfolio of 1,500 contracts, its global leasing landscape includes warehouses, factories, offices, storefronts, and vehicle leases. Amer Sports’ real estate contracts require both indexation and ongoing, multi-currency contract changes. As a company with multiple brands, its lease accounting operations were decentralized, with both users and data often siloed. When the company altered its retail strategy, thereby increasing their global leasing portfolio, they needed a solution robust enough to leverage these changes, offer a global view of their lease landscape, and meet the lease accounting standards.
Why Nakisa Lease Administration Amer Sports required a single, centralized, global solution with native SAP integration able to meet the latest compliance standards, including IFRS 16. With the company’s decentralized leasing process and 80+ users located around the world, they needed an easy-to-use cloud-based application able to handle a variety of leases and able to operate in multiple currencies. A single application instance in the cloud, accessible worldwide, was one of their their prerequisites, as working with with a cloud-based solution allows for digital warehousing for assets, liabilities, and payment schedules, and original contracts may be directly attached as embedded documents. These features were key for users to be able to concentrate on accounting topics without requiring access to paper documentation for reconciliation and audits purposes.
After evaluating the options in the market, Amer Sports determined that Nakisa Lease Administration was the ideal solution to fit their requirements.
The Result Amer Sports was the first adopter of the Nakisa Lease Administration cloud solution in the region. The transition went smoothly, and Amer Sports now operate an easily manageable solution with an intuitive user interface and a centralized view of their leasing portfolio.
“We are highly satisfied with the tool’s efficiency,” said Daniel Marosi, Manager Amer IT Finance Solutions. “The solution integrates seamlessly with our multiple SAP ERPs, our users find the tool easy to use, and our Group Finance and Financial Shared Service Center spend far less time resolving lease accounting issues.”
Prior to working with Nakisa, each region and brand followed their own lease accounting processes. Thanks to Nakisa Lease Administration, Amer Sports now operates centralized lease asset accounting in their European Financial Shared Service Center. The result has been a streamlined lease accounting process, which has cut down on the time and effort required by different departments. With four main user groups (Local Financial, Lease Accountants, Super Users, and IT Consultants) and over 80 lease accounting operators, the time and cost savings are significant. “The scalability of Nakisa’s lease accounting tool has simplified our B2C expansion and has increased the overall transparency of our leasing process,” said Katariina Juthström, Director Group Accounting and Reporting.
“With Nakisa Lease Administration, Amer Sports was able to consolidate their lease data using a single tool,” said Imran Mia, Nakisa’s VP of Global Solutions Engineering – Finance. “We were pleased that the versatility and scalability of our solution has enabled Amer Sports to harmonize the lease accounting process throughout the company and add increased visibility into their business operations.”
“The solution integrates seamlessly with our multiple SAP ERPs, our users find the tool easy to use, and our Group Finance and Financial Shared Service Center spend far less time resolving lease accounting issues.”
– Daniel Marosi, Manager Amer IT Finance Solutions