Case Study - Finance & Accounting

Major Media Company: Shared Services Implementation

Resources Global Professionals was engaged by this major company operating in media and conference markets to support their Shared Service Centre (SSC) implementation. A team of four consultants, including a lead Programme Manager were provided and responsible for conducting a feasibility study of the European Finance function (including data and application environment), developing a business case for the implementation of a European SSC, recommending an appropriate organisation design for European finance functions and designing and implementing a SSC structure – inclusive of people, systems, data structure, country migration and approach.

In addition, we managed the overall development of the SSC, the migration of country finance functions into the SSC and made recommendations as it relates to local finance redundancies. We also managed the SSC operations (on an interim basis) and worked with the stakeholder group to manage issue resolution with operational and group management.

This project was also inclusive of implementing a general ledger tool (CODA). We assessed the requirements of the business, and designed processes and the overall group Chart of Accounts. Our team also managed the migration from legacy processes and systems and had responsibility for the training and softer change management elements required to make this a successful implementation.

The challenges we faced with this project were in relation to working within a multi cultural European environment, addressing processing challenges for different tax and accounting legislation and building an effective team environment with new people. To date, we have successfully delivered a stable, fully functioning and efficient PAN European service centre and have created a financial organisational design to support rapid growth through acquisition.

Large International Advertising Agency: Accounting Restatement

Resources Global Professionals was engaged by a well known international advertising agency to assist with a restatement of their (prior year) financial results. We began by establishing a European Client Service management team to provide programme and project management and assigned 24 UK-based consultants and a team of European based consultants to the initiative across Europe. This mobilisation was realised within two weeks.
Our consultants supplemented the clients’ internal finance team and were responsible for performing detailed accounting tasks in relation to the restatement and assisted with month end reporting.

The main challenge for this project was to rapidly mobilise a large team of consultants across what was a decentralised group structure. This involved working in a number of group agencies, and alongside varying cultures. Additionally, we encouraged the sharing of data and knowledge across the group to ensure that a level of consistency was applied and followed through in all global locations.

The deliverable to the client was restated financials, which they submitted, along with all of the necessary SEC filings. Following the restatement, our consultants were involved in the client’s global Sarbanes-Oxley compliance programme.

Major Energy Company: Process Improvement

Resources Global Professionals was engaged by a major oil and gas company to support a processes and systems standardisation and improvement project deployed to cope with issues resulting from growth through acquisition. The client’s project is an ongoing global transformation program within the Refining and Marketing segment and is focused on improving, standardising and simplifying processes by designing end to end processes enabled through SAP.

Our team of 14 consultants was assigned to the initiative and work alongside the lead integrator and internal employees to ensure that the improvements and designs are customised to the client’s needs. We act as a process design authority across multiple functions performing process design and optimisation and provide implementation support for SAP MM, SRM, MDM, Planning, PLM, xApps, SD, FI/CO and BW. We also support the P2P, planning, customer facing, O2C, finance and MI teams across multiple core processes, have defined the data management across all functional areas. Additionally, we have led training and provided support for the writing and delivery of training materials and led the development of the end to end testing through development and user testing. We continue to work with the PMO responsible for change requests to the functional requirements.

One of the challenges we have encountered with this initiative is to balance all of the client’s immediate needs for very specific process and SAP modular skilled consultants to compliment those that already exist within the project teams. The feedback from the client has been overwhelmingly positive and has included commentary on the flexibility on our consultants, their initiative and their ability to continuously add value to the project.

The business has benefited (and continues to do so as this project is ongoing) by our consultants ensuring that the design templates and implementation are fully aligned to the needs of the business. Our Client Service team’s knowledge and experience has also helped the client to structure needs and ensure appropriate resourcing levels are realised.