NetSuite Finance rollout implementation with German localization for Concord

Concord is an independent worldwide leader in the development, management, and acquisition of sound recordings, music publishing, and theatrical performance rights. Founded in the US, with offices in the US, London, Berlin, and staff in Toronto, Tokyo, and Melbourne.

Concord approached Alta Via after an unsuccessful attempt in bringing their German subsidiary live. The Concord team needed a partner in Germany that would be able to lead the implementation and support the local team.

The project was a joint effort of the Concord UK team, the German team, and Alta Via.
Alta Via managed the project, the integration, and the communication between all parties. During the project, Alta Via learned about Concord’s processes and their existing NetSuite implementation and rolled it out to Germany. The six-month project was structured with milestones – kick-off, pilot, acceptance test, deployment, and the go-live support – by a team of four Consultants.

“Our Team consisted of three consultants and one project manager. The German team supported the translation between the UK team, so when something was not clear in the meetings to the German team, we paused and allowed the German team to fully understand the topics. This guaranteed the quality of the collaboration between Concord UK, Germany, and Alta Via. The right project setup and structure enabled the project to go live on time and on budget.” (Dikla Zilberberg, Alta via Project Manager)

Implementation Highlights

  • Concord’s German office in Berlin required 17 new subsidiaries to be added to the existing NetSuite environment used by Concord in the UK and US. This made uploading both the master data and transactional data complex.
  • In order to be able to comply with German financial and tax regulations the German Bundle was installed to automate VAT clawback and HGB reporting.
  • Concord Germany had been using two separate systems, namely NAVISION and SUN, for CRM and finances, and consolidating all of this information into one system was certainly a big challenge.
  • The Concord group also has several external systems that uploaded data into their NetSuite environment and it took a fair amount of coordination and patience to get all of this to work for the German office. 
  • The existing vendors, vendor bills and vendor bill payment approvals needed to be expanded to include the users in Berlin. 
  • We did the Implementation of NetSuite Customer Invoicing, receivables and payments
  • An automated method of assigning the correct tax item to new customers and vendors was created in order to save time for the users in Germany.

All the above tasks and responsibilities were challenging but the Concord UK and German team, together with our strong and well-qualified team, were able to meet the challenge and roll out the Concord NetSuite implementation to their German office. 

Alta Via got us over the line!

“Since the go-live, Alta Via continues to support the Concord team with improvements and fine-tuning of NetSuite Processes. We look forward to continuing the good work with Concord. We thank you for your trust.” (Robert Kozaz, Concord)