Driving more value from financial processes in preparation for sale

A Healthcare Services Provider in Canada encountered significant challenges with their financial reporting. The company was using outdated technology systems and manual methods that impacted their ability to efficiently deliver financial reports and generate business value. The financial planning and analysis (FP&A) process was notably fragmented across different business units, time-consuming, and susceptible to mistakes. With the upcoming sale of the company, it became essential to streamline and automate these processes to improve efficiency and ensure accurate financial insights.

The company's financial reporting was heavily reliant on manual data entry and spreadsheets. Each month, finance team members spent days compiling and reconciling data from various sources to generate financial statements and reports. This manual process was not only inefficient but also increased the risk of errors and inconsistencies. The outdated system made it difficult to scale and adapt to new reporting requirements.

Moreover, the organization lacked standard key performance indicators (KPIs) across functions and business units, making it very difficult to slice and dice KPIs by location and business unit. This deficiency also prevented the comparison of KPIs for historical trends and forecasts. Financial information was generated periodically in Excel format, and the financial reporting failed to align with the chart of accounts of the holding company.

To address these challenges and optimize their FP&A reporting, the KPMG in Canada team was tasked with optimizing and automating the financial close reporting and insights processes.

With the impending sale of the company, KPMG teams needed to swiftly implement solutions that would provide a comprehensive overview of the company's finances. This would help unlock value and support the leadership's strategic goal of preparing the company for sale. During our assessment, we identified the following opportunities:

• Introducing a real-time data refresh dashboard for timely and accurate financial reporting
• Reducing manual inputs and month-end reporting via predefined setups to achieve time savings
• Enhancing reporting outputs with pre-built reports offering PDF, Excel, and image exports, along with custom visuals and bookmarks
• Establishing role-level security to limit access to sensitive information to enable data protection
• Coordinating the reporting of financial and operational KPIs across departments to reduce reporting time
• Incorporating KPI trending and variance analysis for valuable performance insights

The automation of the company’s financial reporting processes led to significant enhancements in both efficiency and accuracy. The introduction of a new financial reporting dashboard that is customizable and dynamic have allowed users to generate financial statements and insights with just a few clicks, significantly reducing the time required for monthly reporting. The finance team reported a 30 to 40 percent reduction in the time required for monthly reporting.

In addition, an updated data pipeline process – from raw data to insights – was implemented. The process generates monthly trial balance exports and seamless financial reporting dashboards mapped to the holding company’s chart of accounts: this has also resulted in a 15 to 20 percent lower manual effort in upfront processing.

Finally, harmonized reporting of financial and operational KPIs across functions and business units has enabled stakeholders to understand and analyze financial data more promptly. This has facilitated improved decision-making, a clear view of the company’s financial health and the ability to implement corrective actions for targeting specific business areas.

The company was sold effectively with a clear view of its finances and while preserving deal value. KPMG teams have been kept on after the deal to continue helping the client with their financial optimizations, now incorporating more advanced tools like generative AI.

Contact the KPMG team to discuss your business objectives and how our network of transactions and transformations specialists can support your organization.