Agriculture – Finance Process Optimisation
Case Study
Published:17/03/2020
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
THE BRIEF
Having been established in 1950s, the business has grown through acquisition and over the years systems and processes have gradually become siloed and disjointed. Working specifically with the finance division, the business wanted to build a case for change and create buy-in from the internal team to tackle long-standing inefficiencies throughout the finance processes.
OUR APPROACH
The business was conscious that it did not have a strong track record for successfully implementing internal change. Together we worked to understand that there was a need to build buy-in with the internal team and demonstrate how to set themselves up for success.
Using a test project focusing on purchase-to-pay, we designed a discovery programme that concentrated on bringing people from different departments and seniority levels together to collaborate and collectively design the new finance processes. We used our specialist finance experience to challenge the status quo and recreate standardised processes.
Our two-month project incorporated:
- Onsite interviews and observations with key members of each department, at different seniority levels.
- Requirements gathering, diagnosing pain points and identifying challenges.
- Onsite workshops breaking down the existing challenges and ways of working using the ‘five-whys analysis’ with key stakeholders.
- Introduced the team to a repeatable, rapid action process alignment framework and educated senior management on Agile ‘ways of working’.
- Designed workstream scope and project plan for successfully reengineering the P2P process.
CORE PROJECT COMPONENTS
- Finance Process Engineering
- Controls & Governance
- Data Integrity
- Reporting & Decision Making
- Employee & Management Coaching
- Strategic Planning
OUTCOMES AND BENEFITS
The project successfully brought together staff from different departments to build buy-in and secure a team-wide commitment to re-engineering and standardising the purchase-to-pay process. It also highlighted actions required to focus on improving staff morale, which had been suffering due to complex and admin heavy processes.
The project successfully resulted in:
- Clear understanding of the fundamental challenges in the existing process.
- Positive buy-in and agreement from all stakeholders across the process that change is possible and necessary.
- Necessary process changes identified to achieve standardisation for the purchase-to-pay process that would lead to a 65% time saving.
- Workstreams and project roadmap for embarking on a change project for purchase-to-pay process.
MFC SERVICES USED
- Project Management
- Change Management
- Process Re-engineering
- Requirements Gathering & Cataloguing
- Employee Coaching & Training
- Discovery & Strategy