Leading KPI Definitions and Data Warehouse Development in an IPO Readiness Context
The Situation
The largest franchisor and operator of out-of-home waxing services with over 800 centers in the United States needed to stand up an enterprise data warehouse (EDW) and redefine its non-GAAP key performance indicators (KPI) in advance of its initial public offering (IPO). The new EDW was required to unify data between the legacy and new point-of-sale systems and calculate accrual-basis KPIs to complement the cash-basis KPIs reported historically. The Company’s internal project management oversight (PMO) function was short-staffed and not in a position to manage a project of this magnitude and complexity. Accordion was engaged to provide PMO support, document and benchmark existing KPIs against comparable franchise operators, and then redefine and develop them on an accrual basis.
Services
IPO Readiness
Project Management Oversight
Stakeholder Reporting & KPI Development
The Execution
Our team initially assessed the detailed requirements through a review of the available documentation and in-depth interviews with key stakeholders leading to the following implementation steps:
- Provided Project Management Oversight including establishing meetings cadence, setting timelines and deliverables and managing several teams working together towards providing valid KPIs for the S-1 filing on a condensed timeline.
- Managed the process of extracting data from the point-of-sale systems, unifying the data with de-duplicated customer IDs and loading the data into a data warehouse environment where the KPIs can be calculated.
- Collected, synthesized, and presented business requirements for the EDW for implementation by the IT team.
- Led the definition and enhancement of existing KPIs by comparing KPI definitions of comparable publicly traded companies and presented new definitions to the Executive Leadership Team for approval.
- Led the implementation of approved KPIs including developing technical definitions to facilitate KPI development by the IT team, and validated KPI calculations by the design and execution of test cases using business intelligence models to provide Quality Assurance & User Acceptance Testing.
- Developed an interim reporting model using PowerBI for quarterly and weekly flash reporting to serve as a stopgap reporting solution until the new EDW was fully operational.
- Supported the Company externally report non-GAAP KPI results for two quarters following the IPO and then transitioned to the Finance and IT teams.
The Results
Accordion’s work on the engagement allowed the Company to include operational non-GAAP KPIs in their S-1 filing, thereby providing additional insight into its business drivers and growth story in time for its accelerated IPO timeline. The Company was then able to leverage this work product for public quarterly reporting of non-GAAP KPIs, and interim weekly flash reporting while the Company stood up its final EDW incorporating business requirements.