One company,
one voice
How Deloitte helped simplify and strengthen a company’s system landscape.
HELPING 500
COMPANIES TO
ACT AS ONE
The Situation
After many years of acquisitions, a global company with a diversified portfolio of products had a problem: With many reporting companies under its umbrella, it needed greater efficiency and transparency in its financial reporting. Part of the reason was to create greater data visibility for the entire company and to free up employees who were forced to manually input data.
The company’s success of acquiring between two and three companies a year over many years also came with a challenge. With so many stakeholders, the company suddenly faced an aging and outsized technology architecture: More than 60 Enterprise Resource Planning software platforms (ERPs), multiple reporting cubes, disseminated data, and deferred maintenance of software that was decades old.
In other words, every finance professional within the organization had their own way to access and disseminate data. As a result, overtime costs were rising due to the inefficiencies associated with manually inputting data.
Finally, with so many ERPs, there was limited visibility into the data, which hindered the ability to create meaningful business decisions.
Outcomes were delayed or not met, forcing a substantial need to make such a fragmented landscape whole again. Clearly, the organization needed to improve all financial capabilities to improve outcomes, drive value, and ultimately strengthen the user experience.
THE SOLVE
CREATING A TRANSFORMATIONAL PIVOT INTERNALLY TO IMPROVE GROWTH
The Impact
The organization now has the technical tools to create greater efficiency and transparency. Finance professionals now have a clear lens into the data, which can make them more effective partners with the organization—as a more granular level of detail improves business decisions, strategy, and, ultimately, performance.
Processes are also now simpler and standardized today. By using technology to automate different functions, users now have the time and the data to drive smarter and faster business decisions. Now, any companies acquired by the organization can easily harmonize within the organization, making growth not a short-term burden but a long-term benefit.
Changes from the overall program are impacting more than 6,000 finance professionals, including more than 2,000 within their shared service organization.
By automating manual processes, the new technology is helping improve strategy to yield greater value, as well as giving greater transparency for everyone within the organization.