Insights make insurer's work less taxing
KPMG helped insurance intermediary Brown and Brown create interactive Workday financial and tax-related reporting to improve data quality and support compliance.
Client
Brown & Brown
Sector
Financial services
Project
Optimizing financial and tax reporting processes
Client challenge
Leading insurance intermediary Brown & Brown had replaced a large number of fragmented and outdated systems with the Workday Financials technology platform. The new platform reduced costs, accelerated monthly closings, eliminated manual processes, and improved access to information.
However, the company needed additional reporting capabilities to help executives consolidate key information, identify important trends, or drill down to more granular levels of data. Equally important, the tax function needed greater visibility into tax-related information to make timely decisions and help mitigate risk
We were impressed by KPMG’s disciplined approach and creativity.
John Andrisen
Assistant Controller, Brown & Brown, Inc.
Approach
“The KPMG team helped in transforming and redesigning our tax information needs upon our conversion to Workday Financials. They brought a wealth of knowledge in the redesign and implementation of all our tax data entry points into the provision and compliance processes. We found KPMG to be a trusted advisor in our transformation process from design and testing through implementation and follow-up. We valued their responsiveness to our every need along the process.” — James Lanni, CPA, Director of Taxation, Brown & Brown, Inc.
Brown & Brown had recently implemented Workday to consolidate, analyze, and manage financial data from 200 profit centers across the nation. Extending the reach of the new platform, the KPMG team designed and implemented templates for an additional wave of financial reports, supporting a flexible yet tightly coordinated solution that included Workday functionality, financial reports, trends, and tax reports.
Pleased with the results of the financial reporting project, Brown & Brown asked KPMG to:
1
Leverage the Workday platform to develop a new series of reports for the tax function. This new assignment was a natural fit between needs and resources.
2
Bring a deep background in tax and accounting to the table. They understood tax data requirements for latest estimates, trial balances, and other key areas.
3
Provide a broad-based knowledge of tax technology that complemented their extensive experience in enterprise IT and Workday. This helped them to speed implementation, improve data quality,
Benefits to client
“The KPMG team developed many complex financial reports and also created a common reporting dashboard that greatly simplified the report navigation process for the 200-plus report users across our organization. We were impressed by KPMG’s disciplined approach and creativity.” — John Andrisen, Assistant Controller, Brown & Brown, Inc.
The KPMG team designed and implemented templates in Workday for over 100 financial reports. These interactive reports range from high-level overviews to detailed reports on individual profit centers. KPMG professionals also leveraged Workday dashboard capabilities so users can find the financial information they need quickly and easily.
In addition, the KPMG team:
1
Developed a multitude of new tax-related reports.
2
Using these reports, the Brown & Brown's tax function has been improved.
3
Due to better management of tax risk; increased ability to demonstrate compliance; more effective tax planning with greater data visibility and powerful analytics; identification of opportunities to optimize tax liabilities; and improved data quality, helping to reduce the time and labor required to create tax reports.
KPMG insights
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Collaboration is key
Brown & Brown benefited from a multidisciplinary approach that brought KPMG professionals together with inhouse resources from finance, tax, and IT. This helped break down organizational silos and support the development of cross-platform capabilities.
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Don’t start from scratch
Tested methodologies and templates can support rapid system development and accelerate the integration of Workday with Excel and other applications.
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It’s in the details
Tax-related reports require highly granular levels of detail to demonstrate compliance, improve the organization’s tax opportunities, and provide other benefits. This amount of detail should be incorporated into report templates from the beginning, not added later with additional reports.
Meet our team
David Cousineau
Principal, Enterprise Solutions, KPMG US
David Cousineau
Principal, Enterprise Solutions, KPMG US