Salo Expert™ matches senior experts in finance, accounting, and HR with organizations that need their help. Together, they tackle tough challenges, clean up messes, make strategic breakthroughs, and accomplish the client’s business goals.
Situation
Dealing with legacy systems during a system implementation is never easy, but an expert consultant can help you make the most of your technology investments. In this case, a global food corporation was in the middle of an SAP ERP system implementation and wanted some outside help to assess their cost-accounting processes. Their legacy systems hadn’t been providing them with the detail they needed to understand their true operational manufacturing costs. So, they wanted an expert to:
- Evaluate current-state cost accounting and reporting processes, and
- Design a future-state methodology that provides a better understanding of how mix, volume, and sales were impacting operational spend.
Solution
A senior Salo expert—experienced in cost accounting and operations profitability analysis—performed the assessment over a 10-week period. A pilot plant was selected to evaluate the current state and develop the future-state framework. The consultant partnered heavily with the client’s accounting leadership and plant management, leading everyone through the initiative and keeping them a part of the evaluation. This approach ensured knowledge transfer occurred through the project lifecycle. Together, they documented the existing cost accounting reporting framework, identified the gaps and issues, and mapped out a future state using new system functionality and reporting metrics.
Normally, the consultant would have been onsite at the plant, seeing the manufacturing operations in person, and working with the team directly. But due to COVID restrictions, this work was conducted via virtual tours, and questionnaires were used to gather the necessary data to complete the assessment work.
Impact
As the project wrapped up, the client commented on how seamless the project had gone. The consultant completed the work within the designated timeline and under the budgeted hours. When he handed off the new cost accounting and reporting design to the management team for implementation, leadership was excited to put the solution in place.
The client had traditionally used large national consulting firms for this type of project and said this was a vastly different experience. Instead of getting a PowerPoint deck with vague next steps, they got a true partner and felt confident in how to proceed.
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