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: Due to rapid growth, this publicly-traded healthcare services company needed to identify more streamlined business processes for its Accounts Payable function in order to gain efficiencies to be scaleable in support of future growth, and to enhance its internal control environment.
In addition, the Accounts Payable department was experiencing very high-turnover, and did not have documentation of standard procedures to conduct cross-training and support of newly-hired staff.

CTS Impact Solution:

The CTS Impact team worked side-by-side with this client’s Accounts Payable team to identify and implement process improvements to its current processes.

As a starting point, CTS Impact staff performed day-to-day tasks of the accounts payable function, enabling them to identify and implement process improvements and system automation opportunities on a real-time basis.  This approach also helped ensure the client did not fall behind on its vendor payments, while it searched and hired for new permanent staff.

Using best practices as a benchmark, CTS Impact also benchmarked the client’s current processes compared to peer organizations to determine key operating metrics, target operating model and service levels.

Through its targeted review across all facets of the Accounts Payable process, CTS Impact implemented numerous process improvements including:

• Elimination of AP backlog
• Automation of invoice-coding in accounting system (Lawson)
• Expanded use of EDI
• New expense reimbursement policy
• Documented standard operating procedures, including PHI considerations for HIPAA compliance
• Implemented new cloud-based tool to prepare 1099’s

Background: In order to manage the large volume of user requests across all corporate administrative functions (e.g. finance, legal, human resources, marketing, etc.), reporting and analysis tools were needed to define user requirements, estimate resource requirements and allocations, estimate level of effort, prioritize concurrent and potentially conflicting activities and analyze the business case to evaluate the return on investment for new projects.

CTS Impact Solution: Using industry best practices, CTS performed the following:

• Project management
  • Develop and prepare project plans
  • Status reporting and updates to Steering Committee
• Program design and development
  • Design standard tools and templates
  • Develop prioritization model to evaluate organizational impact and level of effort
  • Formalized communications plan for frequent updates to user-community
  • Deployment of request management tracking tool (Primavera) to manage in-flight projects
• Conduct pilot
  • Meet with business owners to define requirements
  • Develop business cases to analyze ROI
  • Prepare project charters and projet plans
  • Liaison to IT and business community
• Program roll-out and on-going support
  • Train new Business Analysts on usage of standard processes and tools
  • Provide Interim Business Analysts to preform day-to-day activities

Background: As part of its new services to provide third-party accounting services to its clients, this Germany-based renewable energy company engaged CTS to develop planning and implementation tools to support the on-boarding and transition of their new clients to a standard accounting platform (SAP).

CTS Impact Solution:  The CTS Impact Project Manager provided deep experience to develop a standard transition plan as follows:

• Develop PMO tools
  • Standard project plan for Transition Services
  • Estimation model for proposal process
  • Resource/workload allocation model for accounting organization
  • Define key metrics and service levels

Once these standard planning tools and templates were in place, CTS Impact utilized these tools and provided a Transition team to manage the migration and integration of these new services into the client’s existing accounting function, and to provide interim accounting assistance during the transition as follows:

• Mapping of chart of accounts
• Data conversion and validation
• Interim accounting operations during transition
• Interim financial reporting (IFRS)
• Cross-training to internal staff
• Document standard operating procedures

Background: Due to the extensive number of concurrent projects underway within the Finance function of this Fortune 500 multi-national manufacturer, this client needed to launch and support a PMO to manage progress, and to provide an efficient way for status reporting and resource allocation across competing priorities.

CTS Impact Solution: To support this client through the launch and on–going management of the PMO, CTS Impact provided strong project management expertise to perform the following:

• Develop PMO tools and templates
• Standard project charter
• Standard tool to analyze business case and project ROI
• Workload/resource allocation and prioritization model
• Standard project planning templates
• System and user testing
• Standard status reporting (for management, executives, steering committee, etc.)
• Post–implementation review analysis tool (budget, deliverables, etc.)
• Hands – on project management (CTS Impact staff)
• PMO Lead – pilot and implement tools
• Project Managers – assigned to specific client projects

 

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

Background: The international operations of this Fortune 500 CTS Impact client did not have standard processes or systems across its 13 production facilities, which limited transparency and consistency of data available to the corporate management team.

CTS Impact Solution: With extensive work experience in foreign operations (along with foreign language proficiency), the CTS Impact Project Manager leveraged his significant financial and supply chain industry expertise to lead efforts as follows:

• Workflow analysis
• On-site data-gathering at 13 foreign plant facilities
  • China (Hong Kong, Shanghai and Shenzhen)
  • Europe (UK, Poland)
  • Latin America (Argentina, Chile, Mexico)
• Facilitate joint-design work sessions to define future state requirements
• Gap analysis  to design future state processes
• Develop and document standard operating procedures
• Develop web-based reporting tools to map to Hyperion

Background: As part of a cost management initiative, this CTS Impact client needed to streamline its Purchase-to-Pay processes, where many bottlenecks and inefficiencies existed.  In addition, opportunities existed to leverage functionality from its existing financial system, PeopleSoft.

CTS Impact Solution:

• Conduct off-site work sessions to identify common bottlenecks and inefficiencies
• Develop future state process roadmap to resolve process breakdowns
• Investigate use of existing PeopleSoft functionality to identify further automation options
• Develop and maintain an action plan to implement process and systems changes

Background: In order to manage its global import function consistently, and to manage the enterprise risk associated with Import activities, this CTS Impact client needed to establish formal standard policies and operating procedures.

CTS Impact Solution:

• Data-gathering
  • Coordinate business unit self-assessments
  • Serve as key liaison to plant management to obtain survey responses
• Data analysis
  • Prepare reports to track and monitor compliancy and audit readiness
  • Development of database tool to collect plant data
• Documentation of standard operating procedures
  • Develop procedures manual
  • Provide training
• Customs Audits
  • Provide first-level support for business units and plants
  • Interface with Legal department  for information requests related to Customs Audits
  • Design and execute pre-audit reviews to ensure compliance in future

Background: As a rapidly growing wireless telecommunications company, the current production planning and scheduling processes were not scalable to meet this CTS Impact client’s future business requirements.

CTS Impact Solution:

• Identify business requirements
• Develop a net purchasing requirements (NPR) model and related tools
• Document standard operating procedures
• Design reports in tandem with new MRP system (SAGE)
• Cross-training of staff