Real Asset Management International gives Ogilvy a brand new approach to leasing

Famous media agency purchases RAMI’s Series4000 products to control capital assets and operational leases.

Ogilvy & Mather, the world famous communications agency, has selected Real Asset Management International's Lease4000 solution to increase control over its fixed assets and leased items and to reduce administration time within the finance department.

As a member of the WPP group, which consists of over 60 companies, Ogilvy & Mather works to leverage the brands of multi-national clients by creating powerful campaigns that address local needs while still reinforcing the same universal brand identity. The brands Ogilvy has worked with include Ford, Dove, Motorola, American Express and Comfort.

The management of leased assets can be complex, involving a substantial amount of administration time for budgeting, negotiating and upgrading. With over 3,000 leased assets, the finance team at Ogilvy recently set an objective to find a solution which would automate the process and reduce the number of man hours spent manually checking and compiling data. “The spreadsheet system we previously used didn't provide us with any reporting facility,” explained Iain Dewson, financial accountant at Ogilvy. “It was a labour intensive task to manipulate the data and it was all too easy for information to be duplicated. Every time a lease needed upgrading, it required even more data input. It was also difficult to effectively record new information on the spreadsheet without losing history.

“The Lease4000 reporting facility removes the unnecessary work from the process,” continued Dewson. “It allows us to identify particular operating leases that are due to expire, providing us with more time to concentrate on the lease upgrade and pro-actively re-negotiate and renew the best possible lease agreements. The forecasting functionality also provides us with accurate data to plan internal budgets for future periods. It is substantially better than relying on information from other departments, as lease details are stored and updated centrally.”

Ogilvy is using the Lease4000 module to integrate with RAMI’s Asset4000 system, the core asset register, which records and monitors all activity for such capital assets as depreciation, transfers and re-lifes.

“Although most assets are leased, we do hold a significant amount of capital assets on our register. Asset4000 has really helped us to tighten control over the function,” added Dewson. “It's the amount of analysis you can apply to each asset which helps us to quickly locate an item on the register and this is particularly useful when the auditors visit us. We hold assets for various companies on one central register, so the system is of particular advantage when we need to cross-charge depreciation.

“We've noticed a considerable time saving since we installed both modules, especially when producing month-end reports,” concluded Dewson. “We can define any report we need and reconcile data far quicker than before. I certainly feel a lot more confident forecasting depreciation using data that has been validated on the new system.”

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