Kinara Capital achieves anywhere accounting with Dynamics 365 Finance

The company deploys innovative solutions such as its myKinara app to offer collateral-free business loans digitally within 24 hours. It’s AI-based data-driven credit decisioning processes minimize documentation. So far, the company has disbursed over ₹3,500 crore across 70,000 loans. The impact of Kinara’s focus on financial inclusion has led to more than 250,000 jobs being supported in local economies, and an incremental income generation of ₹700 crore for small business entrepreneurs.

Sensing hurdles in its growth journey

Kinara Capital was growing in full swing. However, it’s finance management solution was not keeping pace with their evolving requirements –

• There was no standardization of reports. Automation of reports left much to be desired. It meant a lot of manual effort on spreadsheets to satisfy internal and external reporting requirements.
  
  
• The size of their customer base was rapidly increasing and the existing solution could neither handle the data load nor capitalize on insights from the data in the database.
  
  
• Checks and balances are important in a financial accounting system to reduce mistakes, distribute decision-making and ensure co-operation for completion of tasks. Kinara Capital was not happy with the checks and balances present in their existing system.
  
  
• The team had to coordinate outside of the system for reporting and analytics that were necessary to gain insights for decision-making.
  
  
• The existing system was not capable of handling remote and hybrid work scenarios amid the pandemic.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance - for secure, seamless, hyperconnected finance operations

Realizing the need for a new solution, Kinara Capital approached Affordable Business Solutions Pvt. Ltd. (ABS), a Microsoft Gold Partner. After brainstorming over the key requirements and mapping a few solutions, Kinara Capital decided to get cracking on their problems with Microsoft. The decision was taken in November 2019 with a plan to go live on April 1, 2020. Apart from the typical challenges of overhauling an existing system and resistance to change from users, the company faced the challenges of the pandemic that struck in March 2020. It meant transitioning to remote work which would have been unthinkable with the earlier system.

However, with the able support of Affordable Business Solutions, Kinara Capital was able to implement the Microsoft solution and go live on the targeted date. The features of Dynamics 365 Finance met most of their requirements. Dynamic customization ensured the other requirements were met as well. Affordable Business Solutions implemented the system and coached end-users by holding in-depth training sessions to ensure they got the most out of the solution.
Be it a small query or a more challenging problem, the team resolved it readily and ensured a smooth transition to the new system. Aiswarya Ravi, CFO, Kinara Capital says, “ABS was critical in helping us move from our legacy system to a unified solution with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance implementation and integration with our loan management system. ABS had in-depth expertise in the finance domain and provided quality inputs to customize Microsoft Dynamics 365 for our needs. Most importantly, ABS delivered on-time despite the unexpected COVID-19 crisis. This speaks highly of both the ABS team’s commitment and Microsoft’s technology solution capability.”

“Anywhere accounting” on the cloud and more

By implementing Dynamics 365 Finance, Kinara Capital has benefitted in many ways –

Managing data loads is a breeze - Earlier uploading 1,00,000 transactions used to take close to two hours daily. Now, the company manages four times the transaction load with the same number of resources in the same time. The task is fully automated unlike earlier where a lot of manual intervention was required. Kinara Capital can manage Rs. 1,700 crore worth of assets under management in small and medium business loans smoothly without glitches due to seamless integration with the loan management system. 

Users love the system - The user experience is extraordinary with intuitive user interfaces, easy-to-use dashboards and seamless integration between different modules. With automatic checks and balances in place, there is reduced risk of human errors and fraud. The system is able to take care of multiple processes across their 125 locations and has reduced the need to have multiple software applications for different processes. 

Reporting architecture is robust - Kinara Capital follows the Indian Accounting Standards (Ind AS). The new solution satisfies all reporting requirements for the same. It also provides analytics and reports for management and business needs and eliminates the need of external dashboards. 

Remote and hybrid work is the new normal - When the world came to a standstill due to the pandemic, Kinara Capital could continue with their work remotely. Dynamics 365 Finance ensured “anywhere accounting.” By moving to the cloud, the team could operate out of their homes securely and without interruptions. 20 users were able to carry on business as usual and the company managed to complete their audits on time. 

Higher efficiency with reduced costs - The solution has ensured that a single system manages Kinara Capital’s internal financial transactions and its external transactions with customers and vendors, allowing it to do more with less. Workflows related to prepaid loans, fixed assets, fixed deposits, etc. are automated. All processes and data are well-integrated which has resulted in higher efficiency using lesser resources. 

Rojinn Anto, VP-Accounts, Kinara Capital says, “Dynamics 365 was a life-saver. Before the pandemic, accounting was always done in office. Implementing it was a wise choice as it helped us to transition to the cloud smoothly. Our data, users and processes were online and we met all our deliverables on time without hampering any quality parameters.”

Dynamics 365 Finance has increased the efficiency and security of Kinara Capital’s financial operations. The company is able to accomplish more with a single system as it has widened the scope of the solution to include lease management and NBFC-specific BRS too. As Kinara Capital continues to move forward with its vision of enabling economic prosperity for small business entrepreneurs, it is looking to work with Microsoft and leverage Dynamics 365 Finance further as a core platform and adopt it across other business functions.