integrated financial planning
Challenge
With $9 billion in annual revenue and 40,000 employees worldwide, a global leader in delivering intelligent information to specialized industries was growing significantly through corporate acquisitions. At the time of the engagement, the client had purchased over 100 companies in the prior 10 years. Each of these companies had their own general ledger system, planning and forecasting system as well as their own business processes. There were substantial issues with business processes as well; the annual budget took over 13 months to create and approve.
Engagement
Increase Alpha was engaged to implement a planning system across all of the companies to enable a unified corporate planning process. Partnering with the software vendor, we led the engagement from all perspectives including project management, solutions architecture, design, build, test, deployment and support. We worked directly with the client staff from all five business units to devise a consistent set of requirements and then conducted an iterative development cycle to ensure acceptance. Given the complexity and lack of interoperability between networks, we also advised the MIS team on all aspects of the technical installation and deployment.
Solution
A core team reporting directly to the Executive Sponsor scoped the project and ensured buy in from the client’s leadership team. Core design principles and strategies were developed, and a strict design review process was implemented to ensure that the applications functioned seamlessly. A seasoned team of consultants was selected to run the individual deployments throughout the world, ensuring that the applications would meet the needs of the business. Finally, a rigorous management process was deployed to identify issues early, take corrective action and ensure that the project was completed on time and under budget.
The solution focused on automating the annual plan process and ensuring that consistent terminology, logic, calculations and exchange rates were used. As the previous process relied on 22 siloed systems and countless Excel spreadsheets, this was an extremely difficult task but critical to the overall organization. After a careful analysis of the organization’s culture was conducted, it was determined that this was as much change as the company could handle initially. Subsequent phases were conducted that eventually converted the focus of the organization from a static view of the plan to a dynamic rolling forecast.
Results
Over the course of 8 months, 90 applications were designed, built, tested and implemented. These applications were built by 22 consultants and deployed to almost 800 employees. The models covered all areas of the business including revenue, expenses, headcount and capital. As consistent design principles were developed and adhered to, the applications enabled a simple consolidation process and saved over 2 months in the annual plan cycle. The project was delivered on time and nearly $1 million under budget.
With $9 billion in annual revenue and 40,000 employees worldwide, a global leader in delivering intelligent information to specialized industries was growing significantly through corporate acquisitions. At the time of the engagement, the client had purchased over 100 companies in the prior 10 years. Each of these companies had their own general ledger system, planning and forecasting system as well as their own business processes. There were substantial issues with business processes as well; the annual budget took over 13 months to create and approve.
Engagement
Increase Alpha was engaged to implement a planning system across all of the companies to enable a unified corporate planning process. Partnering with the software vendor, we led the engagement from all perspectives including project management, solutions architecture, design, build, test, deployment and support. We worked directly with the client staff from all five business units to devise a consistent set of requirements and then conducted an iterative development cycle to ensure acceptance. Given the complexity and lack of interoperability between networks, we also advised the MIS team on all aspects of the technical installation and deployment.
Solution
A core team reporting directly to the Executive Sponsor scoped the project and ensured buy in from the client’s leadership team. Core design principles and strategies were developed, and a strict design review process was implemented to ensure that the applications functioned seamlessly. A seasoned team of consultants was selected to run the individual deployments throughout the world, ensuring that the applications would meet the needs of the business. Finally, a rigorous management process was deployed to identify issues early, take corrective action and ensure that the project was completed on time and under budget.
The solution focused on automating the annual plan process and ensuring that consistent terminology, logic, calculations and exchange rates were used. As the previous process relied on 22 siloed systems and countless Excel spreadsheets, this was an extremely difficult task but critical to the overall organization. After a careful analysis of the organization’s culture was conducted, it was determined that this was as much change as the company could handle initially. Subsequent phases were conducted that eventually converted the focus of the organization from a static view of the plan to a dynamic rolling forecast.
Results
Over the course of 8 months, 90 applications were designed, built, tested and implemented. These applications were built by 22 consultants and deployed to almost 800 employees. The models covered all areas of the business including revenue, expenses, headcount and capital. As consistent design principles were developed and adhered to, the applications enabled a simple consolidation process and saved over 2 months in the annual plan cycle. The project was delivered on time and nearly $1 million under budget.