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CLIENT PROFILE
The Client is the world's largest operator of long-distance triathlon events. They account for more than 90 percent of the global market share in a growing industry. The client has experienced hyper-growth and had grown to $300 million in the previous 7 years and was expected to double in size over the next 5 years largely fueled by acquisitions with one single acquisition which doubled the company size in 2017.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
The Client’s processes and technology were not scalable - as the volume of work increased, they simply increased the amount of time spent completing the work. While operating more than 40 legal entities across multiple countries and over 100 bank accounts, the company's size and complexity was quickly outpacing its backoffice. As a result the environment was highly chaotic, they were experiencing high turnover, and was prone to both high amounts of errors and backlogs of activities that could not be completed in the required timelines
The Client just did not have the time or resources to take a step back and review how they were working to determine whether anything could be done to increase efficiency and or streamline processes.
It was readily evident that managing the increased volume was not sustainable and adding more bodies was not resolving the underlying need to 1) assess the existing operations and 2) identify the root cause of their challenges related to:
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Recording Intercompany Transactions
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Bank Reconciliations
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Resolving Issues with Unposted Cash
SOLUTION
Auxis’ strategic approach to these challenges revolved around performing a hyper-focused operational assessment to systematically identify opportunities to:
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Automate Manual Tasks
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Integrate Data Across Functions and Systems
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Eliminate Duplicate Activities
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Standardize Activities Across Legal Entities
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Reduce Operational Complexity
After performing the initial operational assessment, the Auxis team identified two critical problem areas (Bank Reconciliations and Intercompany Transaction & Reconciliations) with a goal of identifying recommendations to reduce the month end close by 5 days.
The Auxis team then facilitated detailed walkthroughs of the targeted processes, identifying critical steps that contributed to unposted cash or could otherwise be incrementally improved through process or technology change.
RESULTS
Over the course of our review Auxis was able to identify nearly 50 opportunities to standardize or fix broken processes, better leverage functionality of their recently implemented ERP, or automate processes through RPA or other automation tools. Opportunities were evaluated based on complexity of the solution and potential benefits
The Auxis team then organized the opportunities into four distinct work-streams (AP end-to-end changes, Matching and reconciliation tool selection and implementation, ERP intercompany functionality/cleanup, and RPA initiatives). Auxis also immediately mobilized to manage two of the workstreams where the company had skill and/or resources gaps.
Thanks to Auxis’ guidance, The Client is currently moving forward with selecting a technology to automate their transaction matching and reconciliation process.
These work-stream views provided the Client with a manageable number of initiatives tied to the 50 identified opportunities. Thanks to Auxis’ guidance, the Client is currently moving forward with selecting a technology/tool (Blackline) to automate their transaction matching and reconciliation process. Auxis is currently planning to support the implementation of the selected tool.
Additionally, Auxis is assisting with a Proof Of Concept for RPA with the initial focus being to deploy Robots to monitor the G/L inbox and then validate and post journal entries submitted to the mailbox and as well are continuing to evaluate their ERP implementation to draw additional value from that technology investment.
