News & Research: Client Successes

Case Study: Accounting and Finance Process Improvement and Organizational Design

ScottMadden worked with a regional public utility client to assess its accounting processes against leading practices and to reorganize its Finance and Accounting organizations to improve efficiency and controls.

• uThe client faced challenges in oversight and control of its accounting processes brought on by:
• Accelerating growth
• Fragmented process ownership among accounting, finance, and the business units
• A complex corporate legal entity structure
• uThe client wanted to implement business process improvements in accounting that better reflected leading practice strategies. The goal was to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and transform work processes 
• uAdditionally, the client wanted to establish appropriate controls to mitigate risk and comply with Sarbanes-Oxley
• uMidway through the project, the company announced a major corporate re-organization.  ScottMadden was asked to assist by performing a detailed staffing needs analysis and organizational design and transition plan

• uBenchmarked current-state accounting process efficiency against leading practices
• uAssessed finance and accounting organizations through a detailed work breakdown structure and business process improvement analysis 
  
• uRecommended business process improvements and new functional alignments
• uDesigned future-state accounting and finance organization structures
• uConducted staffing needs analysis and assisted with corporate reorganization design, an element that was not in initial project scope

• uIncreased control of accounting processes by establishing clear lines of ownership and reporting
• uRecommended 10 major business process improvement initiatives designed to boost efficiency within major accounting processes
• uRestructured accounting organizational design to remove management layers, realign decentralized business units into a centralized structure, and support reporting requirements
• Projected approximately $4 million in annual O&M savings due to business process improvements