Finance Delivered Non-Stop!

In a senior role, INTP Consultants worked with the Finance and Project teams to support the transition from a mainframe based financial suite to a new SAP Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution, across an entire financial institution. This involved formulating both business and technical process transition plans, conversion reconciliations and internal and external financial reporting. The conversion was completed during the middle of a fiscal year and also included a “big bang” approach of the institution’s banking system. The SAP ERP system went live in September 2011.

The Business Challenge

Our client, a full service financial institution, was preparing for a major system conversion. The scope of the implementation included both front end banking and back end financial systems. Replacement of their mainframe legacy systems to a new client-server based system that included a full transformation of their business processes over a single weekend was going to be no small feat. Our client needed to make sure that financial processes were in place to manage this huge transition.

Navigating a Solution

INTP worked with both the project team and the finance department to develop a plan that would manage the transition. Weekly meetings were held with the executive to review not only the readiness of the project deliverables, but the readiness of their business processes and associates to manage the transition. A go-live scorecard was developed and maintained to track the progress. Focused activities were spent on reconciliation processes that needed to be in place leading up to, during, and after conversion. A “war room” approach was put in place during and after conversion to focus the efforts of the team on learning and reconciling the new system.

The Business Outcome

INTP focused our efforts on ensuring the client was successful in operating their new financial systems. While most project effort was focused on having a success go-live weekend, it was not the only end outcome the business needed. The finance team needed to be ready to operate and function with the new system and be able to meet internal and external reporting needs. INTP brought both their business and system knowledge in developing an approach to this transition project that focused them on this outcome.