How VDX.tv automated consolidation across 14 global entities with Sage Intacct

Meet Mai, the finance leader behind the move

Mai Pham has run finance at VDX.tv (Exponential Interactive, Inc.) for 19 years, rising from assistant controller to head of finance as the advertising technology company grew to serve Fortune 500 brands like Walmart, Mazda, and Novartis. Long tenure is the norm there, most of the leadership team is past a decade, and VDX.tv keeps the people and partners it trusts.

For years, Mai was the one pushing back on new requests, because the accounting system could not keep up.

"I wanted us to be the team that says yes," she says. "That was the a-ha moment."

Buy-in from the top was never in question. VDX.tv's founder-CEO is an engineer himself and a strong advocate for future-ready technology, so the case for modernizing the finance system was an easy one to make.

A business that has lived through every phase

QuickBooks came first, then Great Plains in 2006 as the business scaled to around 700 people across 20 international entities, with a finance team split between the US and India. Great Plains held up for years, but eventually VDX.tv outgrew it, too.

When Great Plains was no longer a fit

Great Plains was hosted on an in-house server with a Citrix-style setup. For a team spread across two continents, that meant constant latency and a hard dependence on internal IT. There was no real API for connectivity. Reporting was weak, so financial statements were run out of Cognos. Consolidation, reconciliation, and India's IGAAP statutory reporting were all done by hand.

And Great Plains itself was running out of runway — an unsupported 2018 version, sunsetting within a couple of years. Mai did not want to wait until the deadline to force everyone's hand at once: she wanted VDX.tv ahead of the rush.

What VDX.tv needed, and how they chose

The finance team evaluated three platforms, checked G2 reviews, called references, and put vendors through more rounds than strictly needed.

Mai and her team had sat through enough sales cycles to know the trap: "In a demo, everything looks rosy. We wanted to know what it couldn't do, and whether we could live with that."

What they needed:

1. A cloud system, to end the server dependence and latency for a global team.
2. Multi-entity consolidation across currencies, for roughly 14 international entities.
3. Deep automation for consolidation, reconciliation, reporting, and revenue recognition.
4. Real API connectivity, dashboards, and capabilities for future growth.

Sage Intacct came out ahead: cloud-native, easier for the team to pick up, strong on multi-currency consolidation, flexible maintenance, robust reporting capabilities, and system seamlessly updated automatically a few times a year without downtime.

Revenue recognition made it a clear choice

The VDX.tv team needed to automate revenue recognition, so Alta Vista Technology ran the demo on their own data. Mai and her team watched ASC 606, allocations, statistics, and consolidation run automatically, with changes made in seconds. That sealed the decision for Sage Intacct.

The move paid off sooner than expected. Last year, the old Great Plains hosting environment — by then retired and no longer a support priority — went down during the close cycle. VDX.tv, already live on Sage Intacct, never missed a beat, and kept the business running without interruption. "Thank God we're on a cloud-based solution," Mai says.

Automated reconciliation and payment processing across global banks

Reconciliation is where Sage Intacct’s flexibility stands out. VDX.tv receives statements from five banks worldwide, each with different formats and currencies. The implementation team configured matching rules in Intacct around how each bank reports, so incoming activity reconciles against the ledger on its own making the banking reconciliation process more effective and efficient.

Additionally, VDT.tv automated the payment process by integrating a global payment solution and connecting it with the banks via XML file to generate payments directly from Sage Intacct instead of manually entering them in the banking platform.

Reporting the whole team can run

The team built six to eight critical performance dashboards for real-time visibility across the business. No one waits on a single person for a report now; anyone with permission can see the live numbers, analyze, review, and make strategic business decisions.

Moving from a single-string account structure to Sage Intacct’s dimensions unlocked analysis capabilities the team never had in Great Plains.

"The reporting capability with Sage Intacct is just amazing," Mai says.

Continual fine-tuning with the right partner

The system runs smoothly now, but the fine-tuning never stops. Each month brings a new question, the team works through it, and Mai calls that process "beautiful." She still meets weekly with her lead consultant at Alta Vista Technology, Kirstin Rogers, who has a CPA background, understands both the system and the finance requirement.

Mai's advice to peers weighing the same move comes down to platform and partner. Sage Intacct is the right platform when you have multinational entities, complex consolidation, and systems to connect.

And the partner matters just as much. As she puts it,

"Alta Vista is the right partner. They hold your hand through the whole process."