09/18/2024 | News release | Archived content
This U.S.-based non-profit was unable to provide timely, insightful financial reporting to its key stakeholders and board.
The client was unable to close its books and provide meaningful monthly financial reporting due to a lack of formal close processes and sub-optimal use of technology. As such, the client wanted to transform its Finance and Accounting to provide timely analysis of business performance and forward-looking insights.
Protiviti partnered with the client's leadership and key stakeholders to assess and accelerate the book-close process. This included integrating multiple financial systems into the ERP (NetSuite), redesigning the financial close process from quarterly to monthly, and automating crucial grant reporting capabilities.
Benefits include: structured monthly close process and greater reliability on consolidated financials; data-driven analysis and finance partnerships; improved internal controls and governance; better revenue recognition procedures. Future cost reductions will be based on a refined target operating model.
The client's Chief Financial Officer (CFO) was seeking a partner to assist in the holistic transformation of its finance function to enable more timely and routine visibility into the organization's financial performance.
To determine existing gaps and challenges to be addressed, Protiviti initially performed an assessment of the client's current state based on the six elements of infrastructure:
The assessment identified inconsistencies and lack of standardization in global finance and accounting processes across business units, which were reliant upon highly manual efforts. The finance team was mainly focused on data aggregation, migrating and reconciling necessary data from various disparate systems due to lack of system integration and suboptimal use of technology and automation features. The company also lacked a formal monthly close and financial reporting process, resulting in limited visibility into consolidated financial performance and extended audit timelines. From an organizational perspective, resources were overleveraged, lacking strategic focus and willingness to change existing processes.
Based on the assessment results, we expanded our partnership to include the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and worked together with the CFO, Controller, and CTO to develop a roadmap that would enhance the existing infrastructure to enable a sustainable, structured, and more efficient end-to-end financial close process. This would allow the client to achieve:
To meet the client's goals, we provided formal recommendations and worked in partnership with the client to:
By optimizing the use of technology and formalizing key accounting and financial reporting processes, the company was able to transform how finance works through automation and standardization of the monthly close process. The value added through this transformation included:
While these changes enabled the finance organization to transform, the changes were initially difficult to embrace, particularly for the long-tenured employees ingrained in their current processes. However, by applying unique and creative change management techniques, including a monthly transformation newsletter providing transparency into the program, these employees were encouraged to embrace the change and shift their focus to assisting business partners in developing financially sound strategies to achieve the company's long-term goals.