During a candid and wide-ranging conversation with our CEO Thom Mackey, Lisa outlined the challenges of coordinating verification across Coles’ extensive reporting suite, what prompted the shift to a new system, how teams adapted, and why a unified verification portal now brings consistency, clarity, and confidence to the highest levels of the organisation.

Atticus:
Lisa, to kick things off, tell us about your role at Coles and the kind of work you and your team oversee.

Lisa:
I’ve been Head of Investor Relations at Coles for about six and a half years now, and before that, I spent nearly 12 years in the investor relations team at Telstra.

In terms of what our team is responsible for, no two days are ever the same. At a high level, we’re similar to other IR teams in that we prepare results announcements and presentations for the ASX. But at Coles, in addition to the half-year and full-year results, we also report quarterly sales results—so we often finish one set of results only to move straight onto the next.

We also work closely with our CoSec team, group reporting team, and sustainability teams on the annual reporting suite, which includes our sustainability report, annual report, modern slavery statement, and economic contribution report.

And somewhere in between all of that, we still try to make time to meet with investors and analysts. There’s never a dull moment.

It’s definitely a wide-ranging role!

Coles has been using Atticus since around 2020. Thinking back to that time, why were you looking for something like Atticus?

It actually started with an investor day we held in 2019, shortly after I joined. Coles had demerged from Wesfarmers in late 2018, and this was our first opportunity to talk to investors about our strategy as a standalone company.

We had presentations from multiple executives covering all parts of the business, which meant there were a huge number of data points to verify. The process we had at the time was incredibly tedious. It basically involved someone—often an unlucky grad—copying every statement into an Excel spreadsheet, emailing the person responsible for that line, and asking them to confirm they were comfortable with it. In some cases, half a sentence went to one person and the other half went to someone else.

It was clearly not a streamlined process, and I remember thinking we needed a system where you could upload a document, assign tasks, and have everyone working together in one place—essentially what Atticus offers.

So even before I knew Atticus existed, I already knew this was the solution we needed.

Well, that’s always nice to hear!

One question we often get from people considering Atticus is about how to introduce a new tool into the business. How did you approach bringing Atticus into Coles?

It was a fairly pain-free process. There was a clear appetite for a more efficient process, and we didn’t need to put up a business case from a financial point of view because we could see the benefit Atticus would bring.  

Getting users trained up and comfortable with Atticus was a minor challenge, but after running multiple training sessions, it was quickly resolved.

We always intended for the platform to be ‘walk-up’ usable. We’re very aware that most people contributing to the verification process don’t need to be experts in the platform, and so we try and keep that philosophy front of minds.

‘Walk-up’ is the perfect way to describe it, Thom, because Atticus is genuinely easy to use. When someone new joins a team, anyone who’s used it before can just show them the ropes—there’s no need for formal training.

Coles is now one of our longest-standing users, or certainly getting close. How has Atticus’s use evolved within the organisation? Has it had any unexpected impact across different parts of the business?

Because our annual reporting suite is so broad, our sustainability, modern slavery, and group reporting teams all use Atticus in their reporting.

What’s changed most is the steady stream of product improvements, which only make it more useful—like being able to verify multiple documents in one workspace.

Overall, having a single portal with full visibility and a clear audit trail gives our executive leadership team and audit and risk committee real confidence in the process.

That wraps up my questions, so let’s turn to the online audience and see what’s come in. The first question is about ownership of the verification process at Coles—specifically, who uploads and manages the documents?

The group reporting team actually owns the verification process at Coles. For every report, they prepare a verification paper that goes to the audit and risk committee, and we contribute to that paper—but ownership sits firmly with group reporting.

As for uploading documents, we allocate the statements in Atticus to different parts of the business. Whoever is allocated the statement is the one who uploads the supporting document into Atticus and completes the verification.

There’s then an additional layer of review conducted by group reporting and by us. We go back and check that the support provided is sufficient and that it ties back correctly to what appears in the report. 

So, in short, ownership sits with group reporting, and the individual business teams are responsible for uploading their supporting documents.

Another question coming in: how have investor expectations around disclosure transparency evolved for major retailers like Coles?

Yeah, look, expectations have definitely increased. Investors and analysts want more information than ever—really, as much as they can get. And interestingly, it’s not just about the numbers anymore. From an ESG and sustainability perspective, there’s a growing appetite for more detailed and specific disclosures.

For us, it’s always a balance. We continuously weigh up what we can disclose and whether something is commercially sensitive. But there’s no question that expectations are rising.

In terms of how Atticus supports us, if we do choose to disclose more, the platform makes it much easier to get buy-in from the business and gather the necessary support. It gives us a kind of one-stop shop to ensure the numbers are correct and all the supporting evidence is there.

Next question: Does the group reporting team check that the verified annotations are correct? Is it your call on whether they’re adequately supported, or do you rely on the SMEs for that?

No, we definitely verify that. What we do is assign each statement to both the subject-matter expert and someone from either our team or the group reporting team. So there’s almost a multi-factor authentication process within Atticus. The SME will complete their verification, but the statement will still show as “in progress.”

Once we see it in that state, we go in and review the supporting evidence. Only when that check is complete do we mark it as verified. That final verification is usually done by the group reporting team because, from a process perspective, it doesn’t really make sense for us to verify something we’ve written ourselves.

So typically someone in group reporting—or my GM in investor relations—will review the support, confirm it’s correct, and then formally verify it.

Thanks. We’ve probably got time for one or two more audience questions. Oh, here’s a good one: how do you communicate what’s considered adequate versus inadequate?

Yeah, it’s a good question. At the very start of the process—although group reporting technically owns verification—the company secretary team is also involved. We have formal verification protocols, which we can upload into Atticus, and those protocols include examples of what’s considered good, inadequate, or simply not acceptable.

For instance, an email saying “I’m comfortable with this statement” would fall into the bad category, whereas an independent extract from a system would be considered good supporting evidence.

At the outset of the process, the CoSec team provides training or an overview of the entire annual reporting process, including verification. Then we communicate those expectations to the business through those verification protocols.

Great, thanks. Hopefully that’s clear. We see quite a bit of variation across our customer base, so it’s always helpful to hear how different teams approach it.

We’re technically out of time, but I’ll squeeze in one more question: do you ever need to start the verification process while the document is still being prepared? And if so, how do you manage that?

Yeah, we do because sometimes we’re dealing with a mountain of supporting material, and timing can be tricky when deciding exactly when to start formally verifying a document. There’s often a lot of pre-work involved in gathering the support, so you reach a point where you just want to upload it. But of course, you still need the document there to anchor everything.

So what we often do is upload an early draft of the document simply to get the workspace set up and get the members into the system. We might not annotate anything at that stage, but we’ll assign users and start loading the supporting documents.

And then, once we have a more final (or near-final) version of the document, it’s very easy to replace it. I don’t think this was covered in the demo, but when you upload an updated version, Atticus automatically checks what’s changed and what’s been carried over. It makes replacing the document really straightforward.

So yes, I do like getting in early. Not spending too much time on annotations while the document is still changing, but at least setting up the workspace, assigning users, and getting the supporting documentation in place.

*This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.