Uniting global operations

Atlas Arteria, an ASX100 company in the global infrastructure sector, boasts an operational presence extending across Europe and the United States, with its largest investment, APRR, situated in France. Although the corporate headquarters are in Australia, the challenge lay in centralising the verification of vital public documents for a globally dispersed team operating across multiple time zones.

Streamlining a critical process

In 2020, Atlas Arteria’s Investor Relations team introduced verification software Atticus to streamline their critical verification processes and bring more rigour to the company’s public disclosure documents. Prior to this, the team were reliant on excel spreadsheets to manage verification, which was cumbersome to prepare and manage. Atticus allows reviewers to quickly find information they need to verify, make and track changes required, and attach relevant reference information. This not only makes the process more efficient, it also mitigates risk of errors being made or not being detected. As a listed entity, the use of this product is a strong control to mitigate the risk of disclosure errors and gives executives comfort regarding the accuracy of information provided to market.

The range of documents now verified with Atticus includes standard ASX disclosure documents, such as annual and sustainability reports, as well as the company’s quarterly traffic releases detailing toll revenue and traffic performance. With approximately 30 team members worldwide involved in verification, including departments like commercial, finance, forecasting and analytics, operations, ESG, legal and company secretariat, Atticus became a connective thread for the global workforce.

Getting started with Atticus

Alasdair Morrison, who joined Atlas Arteria in May 2023 after a career in Investor Relations (IR) in the UK, commended Atticus for playing a pivotal role in simplifying the verification process. Despite transitioning to ASX reporting rules and navigating the intricacies of a new role and sector, Alasdair found Atticus to be an invaluable project management tool.

Embracing personal accountability

“Being able to assign tasks to multiple users across various teams in different countries is a significant benefit of Atticus,” Alasdair noted.

“This helps give ownership of tasks to certain teams or individuals, which is a complete gamechanger. In my previous roles, almost all the ownership for verification and accountability sat with IR, which can be a huge pressure and burden.”

Alasdair also emphasised that assigning ownership of statements to individuals fosters a higher level of scrutiny during verification, further reducing risk for the business. 

He noted, “It really puts an emphasis on personal accountability, and ensuring the person responsible for verifying a statement has the right evidence to back up the claim.”

Additionally, the system’s capacity to tag and filter work, and quickly identify if a statement is “verified, pending, or review-required” has enhanced efficiency for the business.

“The version control capabilities within Atticus have been instrumental, enabling seamless daily updates and revisions,” according to Alasdair.

Meeting ASX reporting requirements

Atlas Arteria’s adoption of Atticus has had a significant impact for the corporate team’s internal collaboration across the world with regard to the production of its reports, while ensuring they are following ASX reporting rules and recommendations. 

“The requirements here in Australia are extremely rigorous when it comes to verification and material statements disclosed to the market. I think Atticus is a crucial tool for this, helping broaden the scope of verification that we can manage,” Alasdair explained.

“For example, a recent half-year results presentation we recently published had over 300 statements verified in Atticus. This just would not be possible if we were managing verification manually.”