Aventy, an accounting and audit firm based in Paris, Bordeaux, and Montpellier, has been supporting SMEs and scale-ups in their financial steering for over 30 years. Faced with the limits of Excel for cash flow tracking, the firm chose Okimia to automate this strategic mission and offer its clients real-time visibility into their cash.
A firm that bets on strategic support
Aventy is part of the Exa group, originally from La Réunion, where it specialized for three decades in statutory and contractual audit. Over the past ten years or so, the group has established itself in mainland France with a clear vision: to go beyond traditional accounting and become a true strategic partner for business leaders.
The firm has developed four areas of expertise: audit, accounting, support on information systems, and a branch dedicated to the overall support of business leaders. It's in this last area that the cash flow management mission fits.
Yves Pascault, the firm's president, already offers his clients dashboards to track their operational KPIs. But on the cash flow side, he was missing an automatic, high-performing tool to show leaders this item, which remains the most important in a company.
The conclusion is clear: to support leaders in their strategic decisions, the firm needed a modern tool able to connect the business forecast to the cash flow forecast. That's where Okimia comes in.
Excel is no longer enough to steer cash flow
Before Okimia, cash flow management relied mainly on Excel. A tool that accountants master perfectly, but which quickly reaches its limits when it comes to producing reliable, up-to-date forecasts for leaders who need responsiveness.
Aventy's clients, like most business leaders, check their bank balances daily. Some even had internal Excel-based tracking. But these tools had three major flaws:
The manual retrieval of bank data, time-consuming and a source of errorsThe impossibility of managing cash flow in real time without a permanent connection to the banksThe development time needed to create effective custom Excel tools
"We'd been looking for a while for a tool more effective than Excel, that offers a better presentation to the client and that takes us less time to produce. Clearly, Okimia answers all of these issues."
For Yves Pascault, the challenge was twofold: saving time on low-value tasks while strengthening the quality of the service provided to clients. A cash flow management mission can only be attractive for a firm if it relies on modern, automated tools.
Okimia: the tool that transforms the cash flow management mission
Discovering Okimia marked a turning point for Aventy. Yves Pascault first tested the tool internally before deploying it with his clients — an approach consistent with his philosophy of never offering a tool he wouldn't use himself.
The firm structured the deployment of Okimia in two steps. First, Yves presents the solution to the business leader, explaining the concrete benefits: real-time visibility, automation of flows, reliable forecasts. Then, the account manager, trained on Okimia, takes over to set up the tool, carry out the demonstration, and support the client in getting to grips with it.
Thanks to automatic bank synchronization and automation rules, much of the work is now done without manual intervention. After a few weeks of use, the firm has hardly any interventions to make on Okimia.
The features that make the difference
Three features particularly stand out in Aventy's eyes:
Automation rules: they make it possible to automatically categorize transactions and save a considerable amount of timeThe different views available: history, dashboard, daily, weekly, or monthly views — each client can choose the level of detail suited to their needsDirect bank synchronization: Okimia automatically retrieves bank statements, thereby eliminating re-entry and the risk of errors
Integration with the firm's ecosystem
Another decisive factor in the choice of Okimia: its ability to integrate with the firm's other tools, notably RCA (the accounting production tool) and Dext (for collecting purchasing data).
"The link between Okimia and RCA is clearly what we're looking for as finance professionals. It's that all our solutions talk to each other to avoid re-entering data. Today, it's almost a must that all our software is connected."
This interconnection allows Okimia to go and fetch data directly from the accounting production tool, thereby creating an enormous time savings and sparing clients from paying for re-entry — a practice that's hard to justify in the digital age.
Concrete benefits for Aventy's clients
The results didn't take long to appear. The firm's clients quickly perceived the added value of this new cash flow management mission.
The number-one benefit? The ability to steer their cash flow and anticipate cash flows. Thanks to Okimia, leaders have a simple and intuitive interface that allows them to visualize their situation at a glance.
Yves Pascault emphasizes the ease of use: the application is user-friendly, with clear graphs and several views that make it possible to show cash flow by category. This "playful" side doesn't make you forget the essential: the tool must be high-performing and bring real value to clients. Otherwise, they wouldn't take the time to log in.
The concrete benefits for the firm's clients:
Real-time visibility into cash flow, without having to connect to each bankAnticipation of cash flow tensions thanks to automated forecastsRenewed peace of mind: no more surprises, no more obsolete Excel filesTime savings: no more hours spent manually consolidating dataQuality of forecasts: reliable scenarios to present to the management committee or financial partners
For the firm, Okimia made it possible to transform a mission that was hard to monetize into a strategic, high-value service. Clients immediately understand the benefit and are ready to invest in this support.
An essential tool in the era of real-time steering
When asked what best sums up Okimia, Yves Pascault chooses three words: simplicity, responsiveness, essential. A cash flow management tool that's simple, automated, and that fetches data without us having to rework it has become essential today.
The responsiveness of technical support also played a key role in the adoption of the tool. As soon as there's an issue, a responsive team steps in. For a firm deploying the solution with multiple clients, this availability is essential.
Advice to fellow professionals
Yves Pascault doesn't hesitate to recommend Okimia to his fellow professionals who would like to develop a cash flow management support mission:
"Those who haven't taken the plunge yet can rely on Okimia to have a tool that's easy to get to grips with, easy to explain to their clients, easy to use. You don't need much of an aptitude for IT to set it up. And even if there were a few difficulties, the hotline is there. I'd tell them to go for it and try Okimia."
For Aventy, Okimia is…
- The end of time-consuming Excel files that forced hours to be spent on consolidating data at the expense of strategic analysis.
- A cash flow management mission that can finally be monetized with SME clients, who immediately understand the benefits of real-time steering.
- A strengthened positioning as a strategic partner for business leaders, able to support them on the most critical subject in their company: cash flow.
- The assurance of offering a modern service that meets the expectations of today's business leaders, accustomed to having instant information in all areas of their lives.
Okimia enabled Aventy to round out its range of support services with an essential building block: the cash flow forecast. A missing piece of the puzzle to offer a complete view of financial steering, from the income statement (P&L) to available cash.