Standardizing Processes Across Business Units for Effective ERP Implementation
The Situation
A $2B national powerline and pipeline construction company with 12 business units was undergoing a major finance transformation effort, including a standardization of ERP systems and data platforms. As part of the transformation efforts, there was a need to review, enhance, and automate the F&A processes. The Company also required support in streamlining reporting across the business units – incorporating best practices and partnering with stakeholders & implementation vendors. Accordion was engaged to provide back-office process re-design services and oversee change management to ensure all BU’s had a voice and there was buy-in in standardized business processes.
Services
Finance Function Assessment & Design
Finance Transformation
ERP/Financial System Execution
The Execution
Worked closely with the Company’s stakeholders, in a phased approach, to develop and implement:
- Critical business requirements analyzing the current state and pain points, reporting gaps, change readiness, and communication plan
- Future state design with operating model design, roadmap, resource planning, change impact analysis, and detailed implementation plan
- System configuration encompassing COA design, data cleanse, BI development, ERP configuration, system workflows, and integration with other systems
- Data conversions and validation
- Testing and development while facilitating configuration sessions, scenarios development, end-to-end process testing, and roles & responsibilities of new process and technology
- Go-live support with training coordination, custom training materials, cut-over plan, and mitigation plan
- Change management toolkits to identify key stakeholders and conduct change impact analysis
- Strategies to ensure timely team communication and involvement
The Results
With Accordion’s assistance, the Company was able to standardize finance & accounting processes throughout the organization. Our team provided technical accounting expertise and functional design best practices to streamline future state policies, procedures, and controls. We built tools to enhance training across all business units with detailed desktop manuals to be utilized by the Company in the future to maintain industry leading practices.