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Success Stories

A look at how Acamar has helped nonprofits, foundations, accounting firms and growing companies turn broken reporting and planning processes into something leadership can actually rely on.

Nonprofit & Healthcare

Non-Profit Healthcare Company

An affiliate of a national healthcare company based in Los Angeles, California, including a large community outreach program providing education to the communities it serves.

Challenge

  • A lack of planning and analysis had resulted in sub-par financial management.
  • Reporting and planning were Excel based, with thought leadership required to provide recommendations.
  • Teams spent too much time churning data with very little analysis, resulting in poor business insight and data errors.

Approach

  • Standardized planning model: developed to better manage the annual budget and mid-year forecast.
  • Reporting technology: new reporting capabilities implemented to reduce reliance on Excel and offline "spreadmarts."
  • Future roadmap: road-mapped and enabled a steering committee so Finance has a voice in IT and system matters.

Results

  • Reduced the month-end close by 10 days through automation
  • Significantly increased forecast accuracy with updated planning models and improved reporting
  • Opened opportunities for new dashboards and integrated reporting
  • Defined new processes and task lists to keep teams on task and on schedule

"I am thoroughly impressed with Acamar's exceptional contributions. They are dedicated problem solvers and team players, approaching their responsibilities with the utmost quality and integrity."Accounting Manager

Nonprofit & Foundation

University Foundation

A foundation responsible for safeguarding donor gifts, managing endowment funds, and allocating funds per the donors' directives.

Challenge

  • One employee was solely responsible for creating annual reports using tools and processes known only to them, and that employee abruptly resigned with no documentation left behind.
  • The foundation releases an annual audited statement but lacked the personnel or expertise to prepare the statements for review.
  • The audit was slated to begin one month after the employee's departure.

Approach

  • Reconciliation of prior-year statements: used existing reports and queries to develop a process for preparing financial data, validated against prior annual statements.
  • Creation of current-year statements: the validated process was applied to the current year's data and built into templates for the new statements and audit backup.
  • Process documentation: the entire process, from queries and templates to manual overrides, was documented as a blueprint for automation next year.

Results

  • Financial statements reconstructed using reports and queries accessible on a shared drive
  • The process was documented for repeatability and automation
  • The audit found no issues with the statements
  • Finance identified further opportunities to streamline the process

"We finished our audit of the financial statements today. Woohoo! Thank you both for all the help on the key pieces of documentation for our team. It was a tremendous help to us."Chief Financial Officer

Accounting Firm

Accounting Firm

A US-based CPA firm providing tax, audit, attestation, advisory and family office services to individuals, families and businesses.

Challenge

  • Limited ability to report on activity within CCH Axcess.
  • Managing partners lacked visibility into key revenue drivers.
  • HR had to manually compile reports to deliver metrics to teams, with reporting delayed by a full week and no self-service capability.
  • Data errors and gaps went unnoticed due to limited transparency.

Approach

  • Key reports and value case: met with stakeholders to identify the reports that mattered most to their audiences and the value improved reporting would bring the firm.
  • Sourced data: configured the CCH data extractor to load refreshed data into the database on a nightly schedule.
  • Dashboard development: built a data model integrating WIP, AP and project data, with a phased rollout to manage change across teams.

Results

  • Managing partners can access firm-wide financial performance with drill-downs into key drivers
  • Client managers can view hours and activity booked to their projects
  • Data refreshes automatically every day, with dashboards available online to the whole team
  • Data gaps surface quickly, enabling timely resolution and process corrections

Media & Entertainment

Global Entertainment Company

A media company that produces content, experiences and products to entertain, inform and inspire people through storytelling.

Challenge

  • The absence of a uniform P&L across the media division hindered consolidation, communication and variance analysis.
  • Front-of-house systems were not aligned with the future P&L account hierarchy.
  • Functional area reporting was inconsistent between the general ledger and FP&A systems.

Approach

  • Front-of-house impact assessment: met with more than 90 system owners to communicate P&L hierarchy updates and evaluate the impact on their applications.
  • Front-of-house change management: collaborated with 64 front-of-house teams to establish interim solutions and update account mappings.
  • Updated functional area reporting: synchronized with the GL and FP&A teams to harmonize reclass rules with the new hierarchy.

Results

  • Financial results presented in a standard P&L format, easing communication between FP&A and Controllership
  • A seamless transition of front-of-house systems to the new GL accounts
  • Consistent functional area reporting regardless of the reporting system used

"I am immensely satisfied with the exceptional quality of his work and wholeheartedly recommend Andrew and Acamar Consulting to you."Senior Manager, Financial Systems

Retail & IoT

Retail IoT Startup

A company that partners with manufacturers to provide the software on the device that makes a wide range of connected products work securely across Wi-Fi, voice and Bluetooth.

Challenge

  • A missing revenue recognition model was raised as a finding during audit.
  • Siloed departmental reporting limited the sharing of key insights.
  • Teams spent hours manually tabulating, aggregating and correcting data for reports and metrics.

Approach

  • Revenue recognition model: built using cohort analysis to identify when initial device activity reaches a long-term baseline.
  • Analytics environment: a low-cost, scalable Azure environment to consolidate and process data with no capital outlays.
  • Dashboard development: an application to ingest and manage retailer sales data, enabling trending, metric measurement and reconciliation.

Results

  • Standardized the revenue recognition process with a fact-based device usage model
  • Identified and communicated accurate device counts for investors
  • Eliminated 5+ hours a week of manual data downloads and report preparation
  • Self-service sales KPIs and analytics for revenue managers

"I am extremely pleased with the quality of their work and am very happy to recommend Acamar Consulting to you, and trust that your experience with them will be as positive as mine."Chief Financial Officer

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