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Case Studies
General & Administrative
Expense Reduction Services
Service: Human Resources Process Optimization
Client: The Human Resources Department of a $2.6 billion insurance group
Client Need: To reduce departmental costs and improve operating efficiency in its HR department, the company outsourced its payroll processing and made other organizational restructuring efforts, and needed to enable and document the changes.
Titus Solution: Our team drove the reengineering of the company’s HR processes, creating a repository for all process and procedure documents maintained by the department, creating process documentation methodology that could be used by the department after the completion of the engagement and documentation of the department’s key, significant processes.
Results: The optimized processes enabled the company to eliminate full-time equivalent resources yielding a $1.5 million savings.
Service: Accounting Process Optimization
Client: A $6 billion global energy and commodities trading company
Client Need: To remediate its financial policies and procedures in response to weaknesses noted in its external audit.
Titus Solution: The Titus team had deep experience in controls analysis and worked with upper management to define policy, procedures and processes and identify control weaknesses and remediation solutions within the IT and accounting areas. We utilized an extensive estimating and tracking model, detailed process mapping and a segregation of duties analysis. The deliverables included comprehensive IT policies, procedures and process maps for the project life cycle, change control, operations, security and business continuity along with comprehensive financial accounting policies, procedures and process maps for all accounting functions.
Results: The optimized processes, policies and procedures enabled the company to avoid $1.5 million of unnecessary expense and capital expenditures.
Service: IT Supply Chain Reengineering
Client: A multi-billion-dollar insurance and financial services company
Client Need: To improve its record-keeping system processes before investing in an improved physical inventory system as part of its strategy to reduce overall IT spend.
Titus Solution: We reviewed the processes and use of technology and conducted a statistical sampling of the records on the installed base of servers and software. Our team recommended an assessment of the entire asset life cycle management process. The assessment revealed significant internal control gaps resulting in high rates of inaccuracy and inconsistent data across several databases. Commissioned to assist with fixes, we remediated a software inventory system, documented reconciliation procedures and created a roadmap for improving the people, process, data and systems infrastructure.
Results: Titus identified inaccuracies in 63% of the records of the installed base of servers and software. We positioned the company to better utilize its existing technology for its critical supply chain processes, eliminating a potentially costly implementation of unnecessary software.
Service: Centralization of Accounting
Client: A $3 billion dollar insurance provider
Client Need: In preparation for a financial realignment, the company needed to centralize its accounting function from its decentralized individual product groups.
Titus Solution: We provided project management and thought leadership for the planning, design and implementation of the function centralization including process documentation, process improvements, realignment transition, interim accounting subject matter experts, year-end planning, year-end processing and a reconciliation software implementation. We created standardized policies and procedures surrounding journal entries, documentation templates, checklists, account reconciliations and internal controls, all to be executed by the centralized function.
Results: Centralizing the accounting department enabled the company to eliminate redundant processes and resources, yielding a $300K savings.
Service: Month-end Accounting Close Process Optimization
Client: A billion-dollar manufacturing company
Client Need: To drive efficiency from its accounting team’s month-end close by redesigning and automating processes.
Titus Solution: We were able to dramatically reduce the company’s process times and cost by applying Six Sigma methodologies to understand processes, provide measurement mechanisms to demonstrate savings, provide root-cause analysis to identify drivers to process break-downs, re-design processes and apply 80/20 principles to ensure right focus to meaningful process steps.
Results: Optimizing the accounting close process enabled the company to eliminate redundant activities and resources, yielding a $375K savings.
Service: On-boarding Process Optimization
Client: A private asset management group
Client Need: To streamline its critical new on-boarding process.
Titus Solution: We conducted an independent review of the process, identifying inefficiencies and developing specific solutions. Our team applied Six Sigma and application development best practices, analyzed processes and procedures and identified areas for improvement. We worked with the company to redesign its process utilizing Six Sigma principles and developed an application database to support the new procedures. We also developed manuals and work guides and trained internal staff on the new processes and tools including process flows, spreadsheet utilities and various other reports and narratives.
Results: The revamped processes improved the level of accountability, garnered cost efficiencies and created transparency within the process, yielding a $500K savings over five years.
Financial Planning & Analysis Services
Service: Intercompany Redesign: Budgeting, Planning & Reporting
Client: A multi-billion-dollar insurance and financial services company
Client Need: The company had an opportunity to proactively identify needed operational improvements and implement them prior to the fiscal year's budgeting and planning cycle. Due to recent acquisitions, resource constraints and anticipated challenges with administering the annual budgeting process, the company needed to enlist experienced external consultants to evaluate its current budgeting process.
Titus Solution: We evaluated the company’s planning processes, systems and tool, utilizing a practical approach. We provided a roadmap and tools to reengineer them with minimal investment while also providing capability to scale them as the company grows.
Results: Titus allowed the company to avoid a $3 million software expenditure through implementation of the improved planning processes. The new processes enabled the company to more easily absorb the budgeting, planning and reporting related to a $6 billion acquisition.
IT Asset Management
Service: Software Vendor Cost Control
Client: The IT organization of a multi-billion-dollar insurance and financial services company
Client Need: With a contract renewal approaching, the company was at risk of paying for unused and unnecessary software and telecommunications equipment.
Titus Solution: We built a reliable database of installed servers and software and reconciled the license usage to contract entitlements. Variances were traced back to business units and mitigating actions were collaboratively set. Within a few weeks, 80% of the exposure was eliminated, with the remaining 20% possible for reduction by operational decisions. Based on the success of preparing for the first vendor, Titus extended its efforts to cover other major vendor software products. By project end, 90% of the installed base will have been validated and exposures mitigated.
Results: Titus’ review and reconciliation eliminated a $26 million exposure for the company: $16 million for telecommunications and $10 million for servers.
Process Automation Solutions
Service: Tax Spreadsheets Automation
Client: A Fortune 50 company
Client Need: The company needed a much faster process for analyzing its effective tax rate (ETR) which was taking one week of the Tax Director’s time during each accounting close to prepare schedules in MS Excel. The tax system contained the necessary data but extracting, cleansing and summarizing the data elements was very time consuming. Efforts to resolve it involved one week of the Tax Director’s time during each accounting close, to prepare schedules in MS Excel. The tax system contained the data to prepare the analysis but extracting, cleansing and summarizing the data elements was very time consuming. Accuracy was also an issue; although the company has legal entities in 30+ countries, they only had time to prepare the ETR analysis for five of them. Unable to resolve the deficiency, the company asked Titus for an automated solution.
Titus Solution: Our accounting and technology team analyzed the process and its output requirements. In about three weeks we developed an Excel applet that automated the entire process and reduced five days of manual work to just 40 seconds – a 99% time savings! Further, the automated ETR analysis prepared schedules for all countries.
Results: Our automated solution provided greater accuracy and allowed the insight for the company to resolve a significant deficiency that had been reported by its external auditors for SOX compliance. Based on this engagement’s success, Titus was given an additional 13 process automation projects by this company.
Service: Reporting Deck Creator
Client: A leading engineering and construction company
Client Need: To develop an automated solution for compiling the internal financial reporting deck prepared for the CAO, CFO and the external auditors.
Titus Solution: The schedules in the deck were from 20+ Excel files owned by various analysts and managers. Once prepared, the files were consolidated into a single Excel file: an all-night process. Attempts at building linking formulae failed: structural changes in the feeder files might not be picked up, formatting within feeder files was ignored and copying the constituent worksheets brought in unwanted elements (e.g., cell comments and linking formulae). We created an Excel applet with a wizard to direct the process.
Results: Using the wizard creates the reporting deck in about 60 seconds. The applet enables selecting a single parent level directory on the network and the wizard searches out the constituent files and pulls in the worksheets, dramatically reducing the time and labor necessary to create the reporting deck.
Service: Monthly Revenue Forecast Automation
Client: The regional CFO of a large national bank
Client Need: To automate the financial reporting department’s monthly revenue forecast which needed to be completed within 48 hours of the monthly close. The manual process took 8-10 hours to update and prepare a 50-worksheet forecast model for the CFO to review and analyze.
Titus Solution: Through process automation, we were able to reduce four hours of manual work down to three seconds. We also eliminated the need for the CFO to review the entire forecast model by creating an integrated one-page dashboard that identified the critical information the CFO needed, enabling a faster and more accurate analysis.
Results: The time savings Titus achieved were so significant that we were immediately engaged to provide additional automation work for the bank.
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