The finance controller at this UAE retail group had a recurring problem that showed up every quarter. His team could produce the VAT return. What they could not do, not quickly, was answer the follow-up question of how a particular number had been arrived at. Source data sat in SAP, the working files sat elsewhere, and the connection between the two lived in someone’s head. The group has now started its SAP DRC implementation with Accely.
Retail generates document volume that compounds the problem. Supplier invoices running into the thousands weekly, promotional credit notes flowing in both directions, returns against sales from three months prior. All of it reportable, all of it currently assembled through a combination of SAP extracts and manual adjustment.
Accely began with a document inventory across the group’s trading entities. That exercise is unglamorous and it is also where most of the value gets decided. The team found several document types being prepared outside SAP entirely, including supplier rebate claims that nobody in central finance had visibility over.
Store-level complexity surfaced early. Different outlets had been handling returns documentation inconsistently, which meant the same transaction type produced different source records depending on which branch processed it. Standardising that had to happen before DRC configuration made any sense.
The rollout is phased by entity. Highest volume first, smaller subsidiaries following once the framework holds and master data cleanup has caught up.
Timing avoids peak trading. Nobody was switching compliance infrastructure during the Ramadan or back-to-school windows and both sides settled that early in planning.
The group selected Accely on regional regulatory delivery rather than generic capability. Working with a SAP Gold partner that has run UAE compliance projects before was the deciding factor for a finance team that did not want to be the test case.
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