Challenge 

A financial services firm was undergoing a significant, complex implementation of a new ERP and general ledger system. As part of the implementation lifecycle, finance, risk, and technology leaders at the firm wanted to ensure risks were fully mitigated to support an optimized control environment. 

While the implementation itself was a substantial lift, enhancing and transitioning supporting business processes, workflows, and data integrations required additional expertise.  

How We Helped 

Cross-functional experts from CrossCountry Consulting’s Integrated Risk Management and Technology Architecture & Strategy teams were brought in to perform a number of critical pre- and post-implementation tasks, including: 

  • Assisting with pre-implementation risk assessment. 
  • Identifying all risks associated with business processes, data integrations, and impacted controls. 
  • Designing processes for subledger and upstream source systems. 
  • Designing processes for financial reporting and downstream forecasting, budget, and analytics for 30+ workstreams. 
  • Compiling target-state process flows and potential risk class matrix (PRCM) templates. 
  • Identifying system interfaces and assets impacted. 
  • Documenting automated configuration control environment. 
  • Ensuring transition and conversion risks were appropriately mitigated via cutover strategy. 

Leveraging our proprietary finance and accounting system transformation methodology, the team systematically worked through each of these tasks alongside the firm’s internal stakeholders and the system implementer’s project team.  

Results 

Before, during, and after go-live, the firm was able to approach the implementation with the support of CrossCountry’s specialists who not only work directly with system implementers but also bring functional expertise in finance, accounting, and risk. This dual capability delivered added value in the form of: 

  • Superior accountability and confidence in the outcome: Executive management and internal/external auditors were freed-up to focus on other strategic areas of the business because they were able to hand over key tasks to CrossCountry.  
  • 100% risk mitigation: All business process and data integration risks originally identified were successfully mitigated. 
  • Enhanced control effectiveness: Controls impacted by the system implementation were redesigned and strengthened to better support the overall control environment and maximize the benefits of the system. 
  • Updated process design: Process flows and risk and control matrices were modernized to reflect the future state, enabling the firm and its people to leverage the new system as effectively and efficiently as possible. 

With the system fully operational and integrated into the firm’s core business activities, additional long-term benefits are expected to be realized, including continuous process improvements, tighter collaboration between departments, and the ability to add on additional features as needs evolve.