Lessons from the real world: Intercompany transactions

The right people should be engaged at project kick-off, as this is when key fundamental design decisions are made. Having to reconfigure the technology build to address a key design decision change because a key stakeholder was not consulted early on is frustrating, difficult, and may cause delays. We recommend team members extending beyond the Controllership funciton and include information technology, system administrators, tax, and treasury. Active, cross functional engagement should begin during tool selection and scoping conversations.

IC technology implementations involve numerous key design decisions that require cross functional stakeholder engagement. We understand that managing the volume of decision making and number of key stakeholders can become overwhelming. For this reason, we recommend focusing on key business requirements to develop an MVP that can address process pain points. You may also consider a pilot go-live for an ERP or transaction sub-set to test your proof of concept before rolling out the technology across the entire organization.

We recommend avoiding heavy tool customization to accommodate your process as this leads to increased complexities in development, testing, and on-going product maintenance. Instead, select technology that aligns with your process’s characteristics. Remember, the process should drive technology, not the other way around.

It is important to understand what the tool can and cannot do early in the project. We recommend designing a prototype in the design phase that allows you to better understand the tool’s functionality and visualize the final product and how it integrates with other technologies in your infrastructure and cross functional environments. While learning the tool’s bells and whistles is exciting, it is beneficial to understand what the tool cannot do and how it doesn’t work to avoid technical roadblocks during the build and testing phases.

Many of our clients have large, heterogenous IC transaction populations. We recommend performing an extensive amount of journal entry testing, with real-life transaction samples, to have appropriate intercompany scenario and product feature coverage. Defects and enhancements will arise, and you need to allocate time to address identified bugs. Business simulation testing, system integration testing, user acceptance testing, and regression testing should be conducted with future process owners and system admins engaged.