Supporting Budget and FP&A for Newly Formed Entity
The Situation
A global business process outsourcing (BPO) company owned by a consortium of private equity funds had recently acquired an aftermarket services division from a public telecommunications equipment manufacturer, creating a $1.5 billion revenue enterprise. The company required assistance with FP&A processes related to the preparation of the company’s annual budget across the two disparate business units, including a consolidated calendar for the budgeting process, coordination of the collection and consolidation of the budget from reporting entities, and validation of budget numbers.
Accordion was engaged three months prior to final Board approval of the annual budget and tasked with driving the required work streams.
Services
Budgeting & Forecasting Process Improvement
Actionable Business Analytics
Stakeholder Reporting & Strategic KPI Enhancement
The Execution
- Deployed a three-person team to execute the budgeting process most efficiently.
- Liaised with internal stakeholders to understand the budgeting process at the two legacy business units and created a consolidated calendar for the annual budgeting cycle across the two units and corporate.
- Managed the overall budgeting process, collected and analyzed budget data and validated key items.
- Consolidated and summarized budget data and prepared presentations for dissemination to key constituents, including senior management and the Board of Directors.
- Provided extensive analysis to enable the company to examine the likely impact of key operational improvement initiatives and various revenue scenarios.
- Worked with newly hired VP of Sales and his sales operations team to conduct detailed analysis of historical CRM data in order to validate key sales pipeline and opportunity metrics used for budgeting purposes.
- Developed a framework for KPI metrics and created scorecards and dashboards for use by management on an ongoing basis.
The Results
Accordion structured a sustainable budgeting calendar and process with buy-in across the organization. Our team documented the budgeting process and transferred ownership of budgeting models and processes to the Finance team. Also important, we helped with onboarding newly hired FP&A staff members.