4th June 2018
This leading financial services firm had steadily added new products, customers and channels and with this growth had come increased reporting requirements and a desire to gain a deeper understanding of trends and analytics around pricing, supply contracts, cash management and more. The business realized that when applied over millions of transactions; smart, data-driven decisions in these areas could provide a key competitive edge.
Unfortunately, the CFO and the finance team found that the information in their data warehouse was neither reliable nor timely enough, and their legacy General Ledger only showed highly aggregated balances. To make matters more difficult, finance processing was characterized by highly manual (excel-based) processes which involved over 200 people at significant cost to the organization
Convinced that they needed to modernize their existing finance IT infrastructure, they first looked at an ERP upgrade that would likely take several years and require several million dollars and still not drive financial analytics value. Instead they laid out the following plan which would leverage their existing data warehouse but provide the data integration, financial control and transparency they needed:
Through one-on-one white boarding sessions with the Aptitude Software team, finance began to develop a way to achieve their goals without replacing the General Ledger. The result was a solution that addressed the three key milestones.
As a first step the finance team sought to improve the manual adjustments process which required over 200 people to make manual adjustments directly into the General Ledger during the monthly close period. This slowed down report generation and introduced considerable risk and cost into the process. By implementing a Manual Adjustment Portal within the Accounting Hub, the organization gained an electronic, flexible workflow with a robust workflow dashboard that efficiently caught mistakes before they got the change to travel further downstream. Now instead of waiting days to amend incorrect entries due to the previous batch dependent close process, the portal allowed them to see manual adjustments on balances in a real-time accounts explorer.
The next step was to reduce the complexity of data integration by integrating and standardizing source data from 90+ systems, each with their own COBOL-coded integration logic and accounting rules, into a centralized point within their finance IT architecture. With the Accounting Hub’s single standardization layer, the finance team could bring together required data and apply consistent accounting rules, bolstering control over and transparency of reporting.
Finally, the organization deployed the Accounting Hub’s Sub-Ledger to store accounting balances and movements in detail in near real time. The sub-ledger captures detailed accounting balances resulting from automated postings and manual adjustments, reconciling these balances with the General Ledger. Now finance teams can drill down from the GL to detailed balances and underlying transactional data – giving them confidence in reporting and ensuring a high level of auditabilty. The addition of the sub-ledger also unburdened the General Ledger, eliminating the need to add to or replace it, and allowing it to function as it was meant to be used – as a tool for high level statutory and regulatory reporting.
Through the use of a powerful staging layer and reconciliation process, the Accounting Hub will serve to improve the accuracy, accountability, reliability and value of finance data. In turn, the organization is already evaluating the numerous ways that they can pull additional value out of their new data hub.
To access the full case study, please click here.
8th July 2015
Aptitude Accounting Hub | Banking | Big Data | Case study | Finance architecture | Financial Accounting | Financial Services
Our customer needed a finance architecture capable of handling the increasing complexity of their growing business and robust enough to deliver data-led analysis and sophisticated reporting - all while reducing costs and manual processes.
This leading financial services firm had steadily added new products, customers and channels and with this growth had come increased reporting requirements and a desire to gain a deeper understanding of trends and analytics around pricing, supply contracts, cash management and more. The business realized that when applied over millions of transactions; smart, data-driven decisions in these areas could provide a key competitive edge.
Unfortunately, the CFO and the finance team found that the information in their data warehouse was neither reliable nor timely enough, and their legacy General Ledger only showed highly aggregated balances. To make matters more difficult, finance processing was characterized by highly manual (excel-based) processes which involved over 200 people at significant cost to the organization
Convinced that they needed to modernize their existing finance IT infrastructure, they first looked at an ERP upgrade that would likely take several years and require several million dollars and still not drive financial analytics value. Instead they laid out the following plan which would leverage their existing data warehouse but provide the data integration, financial control and transparency they needed:
Through one-on-one white boarding sessions with the Aptitude Software team, finance began to develop a way to achieve their goals without replacing the General Ledger. The result was a solution that addressed the three key milestones.
As a first step the finance team sought to improve the manual adjustments process which required over 200 people to make manual adjustments directly into the General Ledger during the monthly close period. This slowed down report generation and introduced considerable risk and cost into the process. By implementing a Manual Adjustment Portal within the Accounting Hub, the organization gained an electronic, flexible workflow with a robust workflow dashboard that efficiently caught mistakes before they got the change to travel further downstream. Now instead of waiting days to amend incorrect entries due to the previous batch dependent close process, the portal allowed them to see manual adjustments on balances in a real-time accounts explorer.
The next step was to reduce the complexity of data integration by integrating and standardizing source data from 90+ systems, each with their own COBOL-coded integration logic and accounting rules, into a centralized point within their finance IT architecture. With the Accounting Hub’s single standardization layer, the finance team could bring together required data and apply consistent accounting rules, bolstering control over and transparency of reporting.
Finally, the organization deployed the Accounting Hub’s Sub-Ledger to store accounting balances and movements in detail in near real time. The sub-ledger captures detailed accounting balances resulting from automated postings and manual adjustments, reconciling these balances with the General Ledger. Now finance teams can drill down from the GL to detailed balances and underlying transactional data – giving them confidence in reporting and ensuring a high level of auditabilty. The addition of the sub-ledger also unburdened the General Ledger, eliminating the need to add to or replace it, and allowing it to function as it was meant to be used – as a tool for high level statutory and regulatory reporting.
Through the use of a powerful staging layer and reconciliation process, the Accounting Hub will serve to improve the accuracy, accountability, reliability and value of finance data. In turn, the organization is already evaluating the numerous ways that they can pull additional value out of their new data hub.
To access the full case study, please click here.