# Customer Story

## How Coles made Atticus central to how it verifies

### Who

Listed ASX Company, Retail and Supermarket.

### Verification

All non-audited corporate reports.

### Insights

Coles have implemented Atticus as its new verification standard, streamlining processes for corporate reporting.

Coles has used Atticus since its first year as a standalone ASX-listed company. It now covers every corporate report released to the market.

> “There are some aspects of our work that are the equivalent of a medical disaster if we get verification wrong.”

## At a glance

- Coles has been using Atticus since 2019
- Every report goes to the board with a formal verification paper
- When the board challenges a number, the IR team can surface the supporting evidence in seconds.
- Verification gives the team confidence to make the boldest claims the data can support.

## Why Coles verifies

Coles is one of Australia’s largest ASX-listed retailers, employing more than 115,000 team members across a network of more than 860 supermarkets and 980 liquor stores. As an ASX-listed company, any information released to the market must be accurate and not misleading. The consequences of getting it wrong range from regulatory action to reputational damage with investors and analysts.

Lisa Zimmet, Head of Investor Relations, has led Coles’ verification process since the company listed in 2018.

Lisa explains, “If we’re disclosing information that could affect the share price and that information is incorrect, there are obviously repercussions. And there’s the reputational damage as well if the numbers are wrong.”

The board is closely involved. As directors of a public company, they have their own obligations around the accuracy of what is disclosed.

## How they verify

The verification workflow at Coles starts with raw data. The messaging is then drafted with the CEO and CFO, and when the document is about 80% complete, it goes into Atticus.

At this point verification is completed by up to 30 people for an Annual Report, and even more for the Sustainability Report. The board then receives the verified document alongside a formal verification paper, including a progress report which can be extracted from Atticus.

## The features they can’t go without

### Auto-Annotate

Coles rely on auto-annotate to assign complex statements to different people quickly and precisely.

### Version Control

Coles relies on version control to keep track of what has changed and what still needs to be verified.

### Evidence Finder

Coles use Evidence Finder to surface the right supporting document quickly from a large library.

## The licence to be bold

Verification at Coles is not only about managing risk. It also gives the business the confidence to make stronger claims.

## A culture built from the start

Coles has been a listed company for more than seven years. Atticus has been part of the verification process for most of that time, which means the organisation has built a culture around it.