Post M&A Financial Integration
Financial integrations can be complex and require the necessary care and diligence to ensure that accounting and finance operations are transitioned successfully. Our comprehensive approach takes into consideration all of the people, process, and data requirements necessary to bring all financial operations onto a singular platform.
Typical Scope
Sales Ops/CRM
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Opportunity and Sales Tracking
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Account Inventory and Relationship Management
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Marketing and advertising effectiveness
Ops Subledger Management
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Project ledger conversion
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Revenue recognition alignment
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Historical data allocation and conversion
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Cost management
Timekeeping and Expense Entry
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Timekeeping system conversion and change management
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Expense entry system conversion and change management
Accounting
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COA mapping/GL conversion
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Accounts Receivable
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Accounts Payable
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Cash Management
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Fixed Assets
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Tax and Compliance
FP&A & Reporting
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Management Reporting Alignment
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Integration into Enterprise Reporting Model
Our Approach
1
DISCOVERY
2
Design
3
Development& Testing
4
Change
Management
5
Go-Live Process
Discovery
The foundation of our success.
Discovery is arguably the most important aspect of any financial integration. We will establish our project workstreams across our functional areas of the integration. Through these efforts we will identify all workstream "owners" and workstream "contributors" for each functional area.
We will then host a series of discovery sessions to document all users, processes, systems, and data requirements for both the "target" and "host" sides of the integration.
We will then deliver comprehensive discovery documentation for both entities. This is accompanied by a complete gap analysis for any additional design elements that would need to be layered into the host system in order to provide the target with key data points that may be specific to their business model.
Design
Our integration gameplan.
Once we have a documented understanding of both sides of the equation, it is time for us to dig deep into how we are going to get to the finish line.
The "What"
Through the design process we will work with our teams to map all data and process elements from the legacy systems, to the new.
The "How"
We will take these elements and work with the host data team to develop our game plan for how we are going to lift and shift our data into the new system.
The "When"
We will then develop a feasible timeline with all of our workstream contributors that can be supported by our resources.
Our fully detailed design presentation will then be delivered to ensure alignment across all stakeholders in the integration.
Development & Testing
Time to see our plan in action.
Getting to this phase is a huge milestone. If we have done our job up to this point, we should be able to follow and execute our plan to success.
We will run through our development activities and raise any concerns or deviation from our initial design along the way. Workstream owners and contributors are actively updated on a weekly basis with where we are in our timeline. Will will highlight all key milestones and identify any risk before it poses any threat to our success.
We typically run through two major test cycles. The first being a "functional" test cycle where we ensure that all migrated master data is able to be transacted on successfully in a test environment. The second being a "data" test cycle where we run through a test go-live process and show where our financials would have landed in our final sprint.
Change Management
Training program development and resource planning.
While development and testing are ongoing, we will facilitate and develop a training program for any new systems or processes that users at the target entity may be transitioned to post-integration.
If desired, we may also partner with leadership to identify a resource plan based on the process and maintenance requirements associated with the additional transacting volume being layered into the host system.
Go-Live Process
Ensuring a smooth transition and conversion.
Up to this point we have successfully tested and prepared to go-live with our data and processes. We will present all test scripts to our workstream owners and ultimately come to a go/no-go decision before we kick off the go-live process.
We believe in a phased go-live approach that provides minimal disruption to our different functional areas, typically over the course of one month. We also typically go through a parallel invoicing process out of both systems to ensure that client facing material is accurate and clean.
With the successful completion of this phase, we will document any additional maintenance items that our administrative team will own going forward and wrap with one final debrief to review anything as desired.