A global telecommunications provider emerging from bankruptcy sought to improve and deliver more timely and accurate management reporting. One goal for the initiative was to compress the time required to produce the board package from 25 to 12 days. The close process encompassed three global shared services centers (Americas, Europe and Asia), with about 80 legal entities in a multicurrency, unintegrated systems environment.
We did a deep dive to assess the current state of the global financial close process and identified opportunities to improve the finance function and close process. Our recommendations focused on business processes, data quality and systems.
We worked with the client to implement interim “quick wins,” immediately reducing the close cycle to 8-10 days over a six-month period. The client continued to carry out our recommendations for continuous close management—ultimately achieving a six-day close and reducing the board package prep time to 12 days.
