Case Studies

Problem: Month end at a large Multinational for the IT department was taking 8 days for a small team to complete. They had a 6 day deadline every month, meaning the team were working till 9pm every day at month end.

Analysis: I came in, reviewed the teams processes, and spotted that 2 full days were being taken to calculate the monthly accruals and prepayments for the department, due to the number of transactions to review and manual nature of the process.

Solution: I built a new spreadsheet, which only needed an automatic report dropped into the spreadsheet, and any new contracts to be added outside of month end. This spreadsheet would then automatically calculate the accruals & prepayments and create the journal for posting.

Outcome: the process which took 2 full days for 3 members of the team was now taking 20 minutes at month end, and 1 hour outside of month end for one person to complete. This time saving meant month end was now completed within the 6 day time window and staff were not having to work till late at night

Problem: A Cake manufacturing business required over 50 prototypes to be fully costed every month. This became a full time job for their Finance Business Partner meaning other tasks were falling behind the role had very low staff retention.

Analysis: I entered the business, looked in detail at how the current costing process was completed I found that a lot of time was being wasted contacting different departments for prices, and that the costing file was extremely manual and often full of errors.

Solution: I put in place a short term fix, by putting controls onto the existing costing file and by asking the other departments to share all the pricings in a central location reducing time taken on costings. When this was in place I then started to completely rebuild the costing file from scratch, ensuring it was automated through macros for the most part, and only required human review.

Outcome: The time taken to complete a costing decreased by 95%, and the accuracy of the costings improved substantially, the existing portfolio of products was re-costed using my new file and several incorrectly costed items were found. This led to a renegotiation of the price of the products and an increase in margin, as well as a substantial time saving monthly.

Problem: A company was confused as to why they were not making the profit per month that they were expecting, this was an ongoing issue over the previous 6 months and was having a serious impact on the companies health.

Analysis: I did a full review of the existing customers and margin calculations used. I looked in detail at all the outgoings of the company, both the cost of sales, and the administration costs. I found several errors in the margin calculations with some overheads and some staff costs such as employer NI cost not included. I also found several areas in the administration costs where spend was uncontrolled and several examples of software subscriptions which were not being used, but being paid for.

Solution: I showed the directors the real cost of all their deals, and suggested what pricing i would look for in renegotiations. I introduced controls to the overheads and admin costs, and conducted a software and subscriptions review, cancelling several unused subscriptions.

Outcome: I provided the directors with an accurate picture of their gross and net margin per month, both before and after my review. This showed the company was 24% worse off month by month then they thought. After completing a renegotiation following my review, cancelling unused subscriptions, and inputting my controls on administration costs the company became 26% more profitable.