dCarbonX deploy the Lumos 365 platform for Finance, Supply Chain, Reporting and Workflow to support their growing business

Posted on 19 May 2023

Company Background
dCarbonX is a pioneering GeoEnergy company established to develop subsurface assets that facilitate the Energy Transition.
Based in London & Dublin, dCarbonX uses its proprietary knowledge base to originate and build a portfolio of high-value Energy Transition assets offshore Ireland & the UK with a focus on energy storage (hydrogen and hydrogen carriers) and carbon capture & sequestration (CCS).

Challenges
Formed in 2020 and already enjoying significant success and industry recognition, dCarbonX needed a system that could drive and support operational excellence from the outset. The system needed to be cloud based, fit for purpose with minimal upfront consulting fees and flexible licenses that can scale quickly as the company continues to grow.

Like many companies, start up or otherwise, dCarbonX used a combination of a basic accounting package, Office 365, SharePoint and a lot of emails! The nature of the business, the need to manage major capital projects, joint ventures, multiple companies and jurisdictions, whilst keeping the auditors happy, meant something special was needed.
dCarbonX took the decision to start out as they meant to go on and get best of breed systems in place from day one. They would operate on a system that they could grow into, not out of.

Tony O’Reilly CEO recalls “It was very difficult to keep everything up to date and this created a risk to us, our investors and partners. Part of the reason people invest with us is not just our vision, but our ability to execute it. Without an excellent system that supported our processes, we could have spent too much time on administering that vision rather than executing it. The Lumos 365 platform in the Microsoft cloud enabled our disparate team and stakeholders to collaborate efficiently from the outset.”

Solution
As industry pioneers, the management team have been through the traditional routes of selecting finance, supply chain, reporting and data management solutions. These were invariably separate applications from different vendors that required integration projects and months of upfront work just to scope this (by which time processes could already be changing and reacting to the dynamics of the business).

dCarbonX reached out to Lumos 365 about our Microsoft based cloud solution and were immediately struck by our radically different approach.
Tony says “The Lumos 365 approach is to take years of industry experience and pre-template that into mature Microsoft technology stack, much of which we were already using. We undertook a brief Gap Analysis to adapt the platform to our needs and were live in very short period for less than the upfront consulting fees of some traditional vendors. Lumos 365 have become a valued partner and trusted advisor.”

Implementation Highlights

• Delivered on time and on budget
• Bringing expertise to develop the master data structure & processes
• Helping to define the dCarbonX standards & policies
• Aligning reporting and controls to corporate shareholder specification
• Implementing management reporting including analysis vs budgets & forecasts
• Data migration incorporating a change in functional currency from GBP to EUR
• Making Tax Digital for VAT using an additional reporting currency vs base
  currency
• Deployment of Lumos 365 - Monday.com portal solution for information
  management and surfacing Power BI reports
• The provision of virtual FD and accounting services support

Business Benefits

Financial Savings

• Significantly reduced upfront Capex due to templated approach.
• dCarbonX can scale licenses as and when required on a month by month basis.

Time Savings

• Significant time savings particularly on the automation of accounting and
  reporting.
• Rapid deployment minimised business disruption and the transition.

A single Cloud platform

• Seamless integration with the Microsoft products already in use at dCarbonX such as Excel, Power BI and Outlook.
• No drain on the IT department.

Insights Anywhere

• The cloud-based nature and the use of Power BI reports has made accessing key management reports easier than ever on any device.
• Greater visibility of all financial data based on industry best practice