Establishing a New Finance & Accounting Function

As a new company with a small team, our client faced significant challenges, including a lack of established financial reporting processes, few historical financial records, and no monthly closing routine in place. At the same time, the company was implementing SAP, which required full-time attention from the controller.

On-Demand provided highly experienced consultants—including an interim controller—who could hit the ground running in critical roles and immediately address the client’s financial and accounting needs. Our lead consultant had experience as a controller as well as many other roles, and he had set up accounting organizations multiple times before. That enabled him to relieve the controller from day-to-day responsibilities while also helping to assess the organization’s needs and build tools and processes.

This rare combination of expert knowledge, skills and leadership and hands-on ability to do the work is emblematic of the value that On-Demand by RGP can bring. Our lead consultant notes that big, traditional firms may give you presentations with step-by-step guidance on what you should implement. But that’s usually as far as it goes, unless you hire an additional army of consultants.

“If you have only lower-level staff, they might need to be told what to do. And there’s just no time for that,” our lead consultant says. “The controller needs to be able to say, ‘This area is a mess. Please clean it up for me and embed it in a process.’ They don’t need PowerPoints from the Big Four—they just need intelligent, experienced hands to do it.”

Initially tasked with helping create financials, our lead consultant quickly took on multiple roles, from managing operations, reconciliations, and forecasts to writing financial policies and procedures. The rest of the On-Demand by RGP team also took a hands-on approach, leveraging their deep expertise to support various functions without needing extensive oversight from the client.

Our consultants are well-versed in complex financial tasks like treasury operations, cash forecasting, and automating intercompany reconciliations. This allowed us to deliver on our client’s immediate needs while setting up long-term processes to ensure smooth financial operations moving forward.

As our lead consultant said, “You don’t have the luxury to take a month to focus on developing tools and setting up processes. You will miss a month of data. Invoices need to be booked, and invoices need to be paid.”

We delivered significant improvements across our client’s finance and accounting functions. Initially, the company struggled to produce financials 30 to 45 days after the end of the month. They now have a well-established closing routine and can close their financials within just 8 days, delivering accurate reports to the CFO by day 15.

Other contributions include:

• Treasury management: Developed a robust cash forecast model, which became the preferred model for the company’s private equity owners due to its accuracy and predictive capabilities.
• Automation of financial processes: Built a tool to automate intercompany reconciliations, which handled 95% of line items. This tool is still used by the company today.
• Scalability & global reach: Established processes that ensure smooth financial reporting across multiple continents where the company operates, facilitating coordination across time zones.

By improving financial reporting timelines, automating key processes, and stepping into critical treasury roles, we helped our client achieve financial stability during its first two years as a separate company. As the company transitions to hiring permanent staff, they are prepared for a successful handoff of a well-structured finance organization that is ready to support continued growth and profitability. Now our client can focus on creating value—backed by accurate data and reporting that instills confidence for the future.