Improving FP&A Processes and Supporting Merger Integration
The Situation
A leading global provider of network services and trading communication technology to the financial services industry was acquired by a large cap private equity firm. The company’s new CFO wanted to significantly enhance FP&A and reporting processes and provide better metrics and visibility to key constituencies. Accordion was engaged to drive these initiatives. Having completed a strategic acquisition of a $150 million revenue competitor headquartered in France, the company also asked our team to provide post-merger integration support around FP&A and financial accounting.
Services
Actionable Business Analytics
Accounting Policies & Procedures
Stakeholder Reporting & Strategic KPI Enhancement
The Execution
Working with the CFO and Finance team to define the set of key priorities, our team developed a detailed work plan to guide the process and align all constituents around deliverables and milestones. Key accomplishments included the following:
- Established and documented the monthly reporting cadence and developed a consolidated annual reporting calendar; Created a master financial and operational reporting matrix, and identified reporting dependencies and feedback loops.
- Worked with key constituents to develop and enhance report templates with an emphasis on content and visualization/actionable insights, and established process maps for each report.
- Owned and updated the synergies model (following the acquisition); Developed synergies tracking dashboards for use by the company’s integration steering committee and for Board of Directors updates.
Given the company’s lean finance and accounting resources, the CFO also requested our assistance with expediting the financial reporting integration in the UK and France. Our senior operational accounting professionals accomplished the following:
- Facilitated a seamless month end close process.
- Developed an understanding of the financial chart of accounts (“COA”) across regions in order to seamlessly integrate several disparate COA’s into one robust, well-developed whole company view.
The Results
Accordion provided the CFO and management team with enhanced visibility into ongoing performance and enabled the company to make better-informed, data driven decisions. The operational accounting leadership and support provided to the Finance team also allowed the company to meet its financial integration timeline and objectives.