Genan’s Transfer Pricing Problems

Before using Aibidia, Genan faced a number of challenges associated with their transfer pricing processes and compliance more generally. More specifically, with no dedicated transfer pricing team the Group was attempting to juggle all of the following issues:

• Significant amounts of repetitive manual work based on older templates;
• Updating seven Local Files with limited internal resources;
• Managing a large amount of data related to human resources, legal entities, transactions, management etc.;
• Managing and updating benchmarks and intercompany agreements;
• Controlling and monitoring non-centralized transfer pricing compliance processes;
• Personnel departures and the associated loss of knowledge;
• Keeping updated with yearly changes in legislation and group information; and
• Control audits and transactional risks.

Wondering how to deal with these points as a quickly growing Group, CFO Christian Kirkegaard Madsen began to contemplate a turn to technology. After just a few preliminary discussions in 2021, Christian Kirkegaard Madsen quickly made the decision to partner with Aibidia to digitalize Genan’s transfer pricing.

“As soon as we saw the initial presentation we were sold and said we need to go for this. We actually didn’t speak to anybody else about transfer pricing technology, and honestly we are glad we didn’t”
- Christian Kirkegaard Madsen

Christian Kirkegaard Madsen was able to identify key characteristics in the solution that would help him deal with Genan’s transfer pricing, achieving his and the company’s main objectives. Excited about having a pragmatic solution and the support of a dedicated and organized Customer Success team, he engaged with Aibidia to start the digital transformation process.

Quickly Getting Up to Speed

Jumping in and getting started with managing Genan’s transfer pricing with Aibidia was a quite straightforward exercise as there are no IT projects to undertake or surprise costs.

“I was actually surprised that it was as easy as it was to get started working with the system”, Christian Kirkegaard Madsen says. “The Platform is very logical and it is very easy to work in it”.

Further, he found the onboarding process efficient and structured, enabling Genan to get the most out of every meeting and enable the implementation of Aibidia’s digital transfer pricing platform as quickly as possible.

“Aibidia's approach has been more hands-on and more flexible than what we’ve been used to from traditional advisory services. When we have worked with Big4 advisers, they often spend hundreds of hours and it is very difficult to really see any progress. With Aibidia, the entire process has been extremely efficient and transparent and that has pleasantly surprised me”.

Problems Solved: Finding Immediate Impact

Regarding the problems that brought Genan to Aibidia in the first place – primarily tedious manual template work and a lack of decentralized control – Christian Kirkegaard Madsen notes that these have clearly been mitigated by working with Aibidia: “It is now very easy for us to update our transfer pricing documentation from year to year. That is very positive because updating transfer pricing documentation when no changes have been made should be very easy, but that just simply wasn’t the case earlier”. No more templates and no more wasted time.

“The logic and structure of the Platform has really enabled
us to change and streamline our transfer pricing”, Christian Kirkegaard Madsen says.

These improvements are also complemented effectively by Aibidia’s high quality and efficient benchmarking services.

Further, digitalizing their transfer pricing has been a game changer in terms of how transfer pricing works in the Group from a personnel level. By centralizing transfer pricing documentation and processes and having a single source of truth for the Group, Genan has become much more transparent and far less people-dependent;

“That has been one of the really big gains for us”, says Christian Kirkegaard Madsen. “We know that everything is in the same system and we know that all of the documentation we would need to present if we had an audit is very easy to find. This also means that if I didn’t show up to work tomorrow, then somebody else could jump onto the Platform and easily find everything they need”.

“I would definitely recommend working with Aibidia.”
- Christian Kirkegaard Madsen

And if any changes occur that might have transfer pricing consequences for Genan, the structure and centralized control afforded by Aibidia’s Platform make it easy to remain compliant.

“It is now much easier for us to onboard any newly acquired companies as well as to document any significant changes that have occurred from a transfer pricing perspective”, Christian Kirkegaard Madsen says.

The Transfer Pricing Future with Aibidia

By removing the tedium and time wasting of yearly documentation updates, Genan is now able to approach transfer pricing more strategically with a view to the future.

“Aibidia’s platform has really enabled us to be in front of the transfer pricing wagon rather than running behind it – we are now in an excellent position to approach transfer pricing from a forward-thinking perspective”, Christian Kirkegaard Madsen says.

“I would definitely recommend working with Aibidia; if there are better Solutions out there then they must be amazing. The whole package – technology, people and value – is very, very good.”