Providing Key Insights and Roadmaps
The Situation
An outdoor consumer products designer and manufacturer owned by a middle-market private equity fund had been formed through the combination of four branded businesses. The PE sponsor and Company’s management team needed visibility into the business performance and implementation of consistent metrics reporting with an emphasis on leading performance indicators. The Company’s CFO also needed a strategic assessment of the current operations and technology (O&T) processes in the context of a planned Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system upgrade. Accordion was engaged to drive these initiatives.
Services
Stakeholder Reporting & Strategic KPI Enhancement
ERP/Financial Systems Assessment
The Execution
We deployed a three-person team, including one Senior Director focused on the strategic O&T assessment. We engaged quickly and worked closely with the company’s management team to execute the following work streams:
- Based on a review of the Company’s strategic priorities and key management objectives, defined a set of financial and operational KPIs to be used by management and the sponsor to better track and forecast business performance.
- Assessed the existing information technology organization, infrastructure and applications portfolio to understand functionality, capacity, scalability and viability as it pertained to improved business visibility and financial and operational performance.
- Leveraging the existing data captured across the business, developed and implemented a comprehensive set of KPI reports for ongoing use by management and the PE sponsor, with the goal of focusing on key business drivers and leading performance indicators.
- Helped the CFO with enhancement and automation of the monthly financial reporting package being prepared for the PE sponsor.
The Results
Ultimately, our team delivered a strategic O&T report that provided company management and PE sponsor with key insights and directional recommendations for operations, reporting and technology improvements, including a road map for technology systems refinement, selection and implementation. We also developed and transition over to the Finance team a comprehensive and actionable set of KPI reports which leveraged all available data from the existing information systems, along with an automated reporting platform. Finally, we put in place a dynamic monthly management financial reporting tool which not only significantly reduced the time required for the Finance team to compile the monthly report for the PE sponsor, but also improved the accuracy by eliminating manual data processes.