Background: To improve its financial reporting process, this multi-national financial institution wanted to reduce its month-end accounting close process from 10 days to 5 days.

CTS Impact Solution:

In order to identify and implement process improvements to reduce this client’s month-end close process, the CTS Impact team interviewed and observed current processes across the entire accounting function.  As a result, over 50 opportunities for process improvement were identified including:

• Quick hits/short-term improvements
  • Create a standard month-end close checklist
  • Reduce number of allocations
  • Develop recurring journal entries
  • Expedite accrual entries through use of budget data
  • Earlier cut-off of accounts payable
  • Revise employee expense reimbursement policy

• Mid and long-term improvements
  • Chart of accounts clean-up
  • Automate account reconciliation and analysis using BlackLine
  • Develop a standard quarterly management reporting package
  • Document standard operating procedures
  • Upgrade financial system to take advantage of auto-workflow functionality (Lawson)

Immediately after the implementation of the quick hits process improvements, the client’s month-end close process was reduced to 7 days.   With the implementation of the long-term improvements, the client’s close process cycle time will be reduced by at least 50%.

Background: As a result of several major acquisitions, this CTS Impact client needed to update its Investment Operations processes in order to be scalable to support future business requirements.  Concurrently, the client was experiencing a high rate of staffing turnover in various management and staff roles.

CTS Impact Solution:

• Issue identification and resolution
  • Reconciliation and settlement
  • Trade operations
  • Data integrity
  • Pricing and performance
• Interim Operations Management
  • Performed Interim Directorship activities until new permanent hire in place and cross-trained
  • Month-end reporting and reconciliation activities
  • Key liaison to internal audit staff during controls review and remediation effort
  • Status updates to Executive Committee
• Optimization
  • Re-vamped organizational structure and drafted job descriptions
  • Designed standard processes
  • Documented standard operating procedures

With the rapid expansion of this investment management firm into new lines of business including investment banking and insurance, reporting requirements grew in both size and complexity.  To address its future reporting needs, the current financial system (Great Plains) needed to be replaced.

In addition, due to the complexity of its legal entity structure, including numerous joint ventures and minority-interest entities, along with foreign exchange transactions, an automated reporting tool was needed to consolidate financial results and report on them more efficiently.

As the Business Project Lead, CTS Impact provided a financial services industry-experienced Project Manager with significant capital markets background to assist with documentation of current processes in order to capture current state and to define future business requirements to support the software selection.

Once the new cloud-based software application was selected (Workday Financials and Workday HCM), CTS Impact supported the full life-cycle implementation of this tool, including re-design of the Chart of Accounts and other business processes, documentation of internal controls, user-acceptance (UAT) & systems testing, and end-user training, as well as post go-live support.

Concurrently, the CTS team assisted the management reporting team with its migration to Hyperion Financial Management (HFM) reporting tool and an Essbase business intelligence tool.  Significant data clean-up was performed to facilitate data conversion, along with documentation of standard operating procedures.  The financial system project design to go-live was completed ahead of schedule and under-budget due to the efficiency of experienced CTS Impact team, in collaboration with the internal staff.

In a parallel workstream, CTS Impact also provided hands-on report design expertise to automate short-term reporting processes until the new, long-term solutions were placed into production.

Other CTS Impact Services Provided:

• Asset Management – Investment Operations
  • Back-office optimization
  • Develop and document standard operating procedures
  • Interim staffing
• Internal Controls – Project management
  • SOC-1 readiness and reporting (and SAS 70 previously)
    • Perform risk assessment
    • Documentation of key controls
    • Perform testing
    • Liaison to external auditors

Background: This large multi-national investment management firm’s financial system was no longer being supported by the software vendor, so it was imperative to migrate to a new financial system quickly to mitigate risk. In addition, its financial reporting requirements had evolved significantly, so they needed to improve their accounting processes.
In addition, this client needed to select and replace a disparate group of HR and payroll systems, to gain efficiencies from a standard platform.

CTS Impact Solution:

In order to assist this client, CTS Impact provided a team with deep industry experience to lead the software selection design, analysis and implementation of a new financial system.  To compress the timeline of this complex project, and given the diverse functionality of these systems, the CTS Impact project team had a blend of hands-on experience in HR, payroll and accounting, rather than two independent functional teams.

Software Vendor Analysis

As the first step, CTS Impact worked closely with the process owners to identify business requirements for a new financial system.  CTS Impact documented current processes in order to define requirements and to identify future state process improvements and automation opportunities.

Leveraging the CTS Impact toolkit, a targeted RFP was developed to review a cross-section of software vendors including cloud and ERP options (NetSuite, Workday, Dynamics AX and Oracle).

Given the diverse functionality of these systems, CTS Impact helped compress the timeline of the client’s software selection by performing much of the pre-screening and analysis prior to the vendor demos presented to the client.

Pre-Implementation

As soon as the client selected NetSuite, CTS Impact worked with each of the functional areas of accounting and finance to prepare for the implementation, including:

• Chart of accounts re-design
• Data clean-up (vendor master file, historical data)
• Detail process analysis
• Define new delegation of authority and approval levels to support auto-workflow processing of accounts payable and journal entries
• Define system security levels and permissions
• Definition of future state reporting requirements

System Implementation and Process Change Management

As an extension of the client’s staff, CTS assisted throughout the entire implementation with:

• Process design worksessions to define future state processes
• Configuration support as liaison to NetSuite technical team
• Data conversion and validation
• Testing
• Develop user-training documentation with client-specific processes
• Document standard operating procedures (SOPs)

In addition, to gain added efficiency and enhance controls, CTS Impact worked with the client’s Human Resources system, UltiPro, to develop, test and implement a seamless integration between UltiPro Payroll and NetSuite.

Once go-live, CTS Impact provided post go-live support during the initial month-end close process to ensure knowledge system.

Background: This large multi-national investment management firm had numerous disparate Human Recourses software solutions which were not fully integrated, which led to inefficiencies and errors. Moreover, its Payroll system was not tied to the Human Resources system. As a result, the client’s goal was to implement one system to meet all of its payroll and human resources requirements.
Concurrently, this organization’s financial system needed to be replaced, since it was no longer meeting business needs related to financial reporting.

CTS Impact Solution:

In order to assist this multi-national financial services firm to select and implement a new Human Resources, Payroll and Financial System, CTS Impact provided a team with deep industry experience to lead the software selection, analysis and implementation of a new HR, Payroll and Financial system.

To compress the timeline of this complex project, and given the diverse functionality of these systems, the CTS Impact project team had a blend of hands-on experience in HR, payroll and accounting, rather than two independent functional teams.

Leveraging the CTS Impact Toolkit, CTS Impact worked closely with the client to document current processes in order to define requirements and to identify future state process improvements and system automation opportunities in each area:

• Human Resources
  • Benefits administration
  • Performance management
  • Applicant tracking/recruitment
  • Compensation management
• Payroll
• Accounting
  • Accounts payable
  • General ledger
  • Financial reporting

Once requirements were defined, the CTS Impact team developed a targeted RFP and led facilitated system demos to review a cross-section of software vendors including cloud and ERP options (UltiPro, Workday, and Oracle).

As a result of this integrated analysis, the client selected UltiPro.

In anticipation of the implementation of a new HR, Payroll and Financial system, CTS Impact worked with process owners to prepare for the implementation, including:

• Detail process analysis
• Facilitated process design workshops to identify the future state processes and to assist the software vendor with configuration decisions.
• Define new delegation of authority and approval levels to support auto-workflow processing
• Define system security levels and permissions
• Data clean-up (e.g. chart of accounts, vendor master file, job codes, skills & competencies, etc.)
• Definition of future state reporting requirements

Throughout the entire implementation, including design, configuration and testing of each of UltiPro’s modules, CTS Impact worked as an extension of the client’s teams to liaison with UltiPro’s technical configuration support teams.

Prior to go-live, CTS Impact developed tailored user-training documentation and job aids, including the client-specific standard operating procedures for cross-training.

In addition, to gain added efficiency and enhance controls, CTS Impact developed, tested and implemented a seamless integration between UltiPro Payroll and NetSuite.

Once go-live, CTS Impact provided post go-live support to ensure the systems were achieving the client’s business needs and to facilitate knowledge transfer.  Also, CTS Impact developed standard reporting using UltiPro’s business intelligence (BI) tool.

Subsequently, CTS Impact assisted this client with the implementation of additional HR applications including HighGround (performance management) and Avature (applicant-tracking & recruitment).

CTS Impact provided continuity of staff throughout the entire life-cycle to eliminate any unnecessary ramp-up time and to avoid costs to the client.

Background: In preparation for its SOC 1 review, this CTS Impact client needed to develop its approach and prepare for its subsequent review.

CTS Impact Solution: Led by a CTS Impact Project Manager with deep financial services experience, the following services were provided. As a result, this client received a clean Type 2 report.

• Perform risk assessment to identify key controls
• Documentation of key controls and underlying processes
• Pre-audit test plan development
• Perform testing to identify areas of exposure
• Remediation of control gaps
• Liaison to Big 4 external auditors

Background: In order to automate financial reporting processes until a new long term solution was fully implemented, CTS Impact performed the following:

• Created Access database to support management reporting requirements
• Developed macros, filters, VLOOKUPS and other spreadsheet management tools
• Perform system testing in support of system upgrades
• Issue identification and resolution
• Developed data warehouse plan (Microsoft Analysis Server)

CTS Impact Solution: With significant real estate accounting operations and JD Edwards system implementation and user experience, the CTS staff performed the following:

• Business process analysis
• Workflow design and documentation
• Testing
  • Develop methodology
  • Script development
  • System and user testing
• Develop user-training  program and manual
• Trouble-shooting and support during go-live

Background: As a private equity-backed operation, the planning process needed to be enhanced.  CTS Impact worked closely with finance, operations, IT and human resources to develop and support these planning activities:

• Budget preparation and analysis
• Pro forma & sensitivity analysis to support private equity investors information requests
• Bank reporting
• Cash flows forecasting