Investing in climate action
Climate Bonds Initiative (CBI) is an investor-focused ‘not-for-profit’ organization working to mobilize the global capital necessary to fight climate change. Headquartered in the UK, CBI develops large and liquid green and climate bond markets to help lower the cost of capital. The organization also undertakes advocacy and outreach to inform and stimulate the market, provides policy models and government advice, and administers the Climate Bonds Certification Scheme.
Finance without a dashboard
With data siloed across disparate systems, CBI was relying on basic, entry-level systems for its complex multinational financial needs. It had become challenging to make timely decisions for the direction of the organization.
Furthermore, the need for total transparency and regulatory compliance was coupled with the need for an adaptive, complete, and efficient ‘not-for-profit’ platform.
“It was like driving a car without a dashboard,” said Tim Morris, former CBI finance director. “We were starved of financial information. It was difficult to decipher how fast we were going, how much fuel was left in the tank, and how well our financial engine was performing.”
Creating a ‘golden’ financial record
CBI opted for the Xledger, a cloud-based finance platform, implemented by Embridge Consulting to create a single ‘golden record’ of financial information.
Embridge challenged CBI on its processes to ensure that a solution that met all the charity’s objectives was implemented and could offer a good ROI. The key processes incorporated included core accounting, accounts payable (AP), accounts receivable (AR), reporting, bank payments, and project costing are available in one integrated environment.
Some internal timesheet and data quality issues took focus from the finance implementation, thus delaying continuous improvement tasks. Nonetheless, the timescale was aggressive, but successful, with the project taking only three, rather than five months to implement.
A green future
The project provided immediate and recognizable benefits and ROI, including agility allowing suppliers to be onboarded and paid 50 percent faster than before. The finance team has also been liberated from resource-intensive, manual tasks to allow them to focus on strategy and decision-making.
The team now benefits from a compliant, unified data set that provides a real, complete, audible trail of current and historical information allowing them to remain trustworthy in the space.
Other results include a faster time to insight with predefined and customizable reporting capacity and a real-time view of the financial position of projects.
CBI is now a future-facing not-for-profit, ready to grow and nurture the climate change bonds market under one efficient system.
“Together, Xledger and Embridge make the perfect partners. They unite best-in-class ERP technology with a remarkably talented implementation team. Digital transformation is as much about people and processes as it is about technology. Embridge delivers on all three counts,” said Morris.
