Insights

Corporate Self Awareness

In a modern world with 24-hour news cycles, CFO’s and Executive leadership teams find too they desire, and often need, Enterprise Resource Planning (“ERP”) systems and accounting teams that can deliver results just as quickly. CFOs and Executive teams find to successfully manage, react, and adjust operations to market changes they require a streamlined and resilient close process. Such a process is fundamental to the timely delivery of monthly and periodic results. According to the American Productivity & Quality Center (APQC), the median monthly close process requires 6.4 days, with the top 25% of companies surveyed performing the task in 4.8 days, and the bottom 25% of companies surveyed requiring 10 or more days.

Beyond accuracy and completeness, ensuring the results are useful and valuable data points is key. Most Enterprise Resource Planning (“ERP”) systems come with canned reports that meet only the basic needs of executive management teams. Here at BGSF, we believe a well-organized, defined, documented, and holistic approach is required to achieve the targeted close time desired. Essential to this is not only a timely process but also data and information that provides value to all key decision-makers.

In this month’s blog, I will cover key areas for streamlining your accounting close process, and insight into how an organization can become more self-aware of where they stand in the process, and what actions they can take to reach the desired outcomes.

A Holistic Approach

Traditional approaches to accelerating an accounting close are focused on examining the accounting cycle built around an entity’s structure and the standardization and documentation of those processes.  

Our unique and custom framework is based upon “The 4 C’s" - Collaboration, Cost Synergies, Capability Building, and Competitive Advantage. Focusing on these four core principles, we believe an entity can achieve its goals of a streamlined and resilient close process. Given the ever-changing demands of executive teams, increasing systems capabilities, and increasing costs, focusing on traditional methods is unacceptable. The goal, and key focus of our Holistic Approach methodology, is to identify and streamline processes and data that drive investor value and competitive advantage, with an awareness of potential cost synergies of a Company's software ecosystem.

• Collaboration

  • Internal & External Reporting Requirements

• Cost Synergies

  • Software Ecosystem

• Capability Building

  • Data & Skills Gap Analysis

  • Workforce Enhancements

• Competitive Advantage

  • Key Decision-Making

According to an article by the Harvard Business Review, there is a confirmed link between an entity’s performance and its ability to make effective decisions. The article cited decision effectiveness and financial results correlated at a 95% confidence level, with no strong statistical relationship between structure and performance.

With today's rapid data movement, advanced system reporting capabilities, and continuous reporting demands from creditors and investors, businesses must be able to react quickly to market changes. A holistic approach to financial closing is essential—one that considers all key factors affecting both the accounting cycle and the underlying data that drives decision-making. By focusing on critical decisions and an understanding of data flows, this approach not only streamlines the close process but also focuses on enhancing its overall value to the organization.

Our Holistic Approach strives to ensure management and executives have the relevant information needed to react quickly to market changes and meet investor demands for information. This approach combines and leverages an array of techniques into a better-quality assessment of our customers’ equity value initiatives.  A holistic assessment also examines operational, credit, and external reporting needs to identify synergies in data compilation for faster delivery of reports, quicker decision making, key data pain points, and increased value in the clarity and timeliness of results messaging to creditors and investors.

Our holistic approach involves collaborating with Process Owners and the Management Team to empower front-line employees to take ownership of data and information. By enhancing system capabilities and fostering synergies, we streamline the close process, ultimately increasing the value of data and information across the organization.

Involvement and engagement by the process owners and first-line actors are crucial to the success of any initiative. Ensuring the investment and buy-in by the first-line accountants and data managers as well as the process owners helps ensure a vested interest in the success of the initiative. Traditional approaches result in reluctant staff feeling isolated from input into the process and reduce investment and ownership of a successful outcome. 

Our approach goes beyond aligning with management’s goals—it integrates insights from entity experts who perform daily tasks and are directly impacted by key initiatives. By consolidating their knowledge into streamlined, single-sourced processes, we enhance efficiency and effectiveness.

To ensure accountability and consistency in critical data across the organization, we analyze company-wide information, identify the initial touchpoints of data entry, and establish best practices for single-source data ownership. This improves reporting speed, data accuracy, and confidence in decision-making.

Additionally, we apply the principles of Transformative Technologies to the close process. This involves assessing an entity’s current systems, evaluating their full capabilities and utilization levels, and developing a strategic plan to optimize these systems—without incurring additional costs. By maximizing system capacity and functionality, we alleviate process inefficiencies, improve reporting, and drive competitive advantage through more informed decision-making.

Pain Points

According to surveys cited by the Journal of Public Accountancy:

• 87% said they worked overtime during the financial close process;

• 60% said stress levels rise during the month-end close;

• 25% said the pressure related to closing has resulted in employees leaving their organization;

• 78% said they were under pressure to close faster

• 75% said they are not fully confident in the accuracy of their last close; and

• 55% said they trust 100% in their reported numbers.

Ensuring reliability and accuracy in reporting while accelerating the close process—without overburdening staff—is a significant challenge. Relying solely on internal teams to pinpoint pain points and streamline processes often leads to increased stress and lower morale.

Our approach focuses on reducing costs and saving time by optimizing processes, consolidating data into single-source points, and identifying both synergies and redundancies in systems and information management.

To avoid wasted dollars on unsuccessful efforts and maligned initiatives, our approach brings a cost-conscious analysis and utilizes Prioritization Matrix mapping to more readily organize and identify feasible, effective, and efficient solutions. Our Paint Point analysis is a technique utilized to assess the current state of stressors in the processes to identify and develop a feasible and decision-based remediation action plan. 

Aligning data and reporting to a single source or department optimizes the full capabilities across systems and requires objectivity. Our team members have experience in system optimization and techniques to help identify and eliminate manual and redundant processes, with a focus on the bigger picture. Our approach seeks to identify pain points and focus on remedial actions most likely to provide the highest results and return of efforts. 

Proven Techniques (+) Plus = Artificial Intelligence (AI)

At BGSF, we are working to collaborate between our two consulting businesses—BGSF Business Consulting and Arroyo Consulting—to deliver comprehensive a close solution. 

A modern approach, however, would not be complete without an AI component. At BGSF Business Consulting, we are making headways in the identification of AI processes and system efficiencies to bring more value to your close process. BGSF Consulting will collaborate with your internal teams, and our Arroyo Consulting counterparts, to identify AI opportunities within your business, processes, and systems.

Arroyo Consulting has embraced AI technology across three key areas: products, processes, and people. Arroyo is committed to implementing AI effectively across multiple departments, ensuring that both technical and non-technical teams can harness their full potential. Please contact us directly if you are interested in learning more about how Arroyo Consulting can drive innovation, enhance efficiency, and deliver greater value for your Company. 

Our Holistic Approach attempts to identify AI opportunities across your processes and systems. Examples include:

• Internal Data

  • AI Generation of Repetitive Data Reports

  • AI Integration & Upload of Internal Data Reports

• External Data

  • KPI Retrieval and Integration

  • Market Data Point Retrieval and Integration

• Internal Transactions

  • Processing of Intercompany Transactions

  • Processing of Capital Journal Entries

  • Processing of Consistent Journal Entries

• External Transactions

  • Document Analysis and Processing

  • Financial Data and Vendor Data Retrieval and Integration

Our Holistic AI Approach is designed to reduce costs while enhancing workforce capabilities. By optimizing workforce efficiencies, we empower employees to focus on in-depth analysis and skill development, ultimately improving the quality and value of your data. According to CFO Publishing, investing in analytics tools leads to time savings and higher-quality insights. Our strategy minimizes data handling through process automation and ensures greater consistency and reliability using first-touch, best-fit, and transformative technology assessments.

Let Us Help You Sleep Better at Night

Whether you need interim assistance or a comprehensive holistic assessment, BGSF provides the expertise required to streamline and strengthen your close process. Our skilled professionals are trained in proven techniques and equipped with the resources necessary to drive efficiency and resilience into your close process.

If you’ve recently completed a merger or acquisition, our team can assist in eliminating redundant reporting, identifying source data owners to ensure a single touchpoint for critical information, and assist in resolving data inconsistencies across your organization. With hands-on experience in consolidating data and eliminating report redundancies, we help you achieve clarity and accuracy in financial reporting.

Our approach goes beyond meeting accelerated close objectives—it optimizes existing resources and enhances in-house expertise. By aligning decision-makers' needs with system capabilities and with integrated AI-driven efficiencies, we empower your organization with a competitive advantage in reporting, ultimately enhancing entity and investor value.

How to Reach Us

Whether you need interim support or a comprehensive solution, BGSF has the vision, experience, and expertise to help you achieve your goals for an optimized close process. Contact us to learn more about our unique, customized framework within our Holistic Approach.

Not focused on improving your close process? BGSF’s Business Consulting & Financial Risk Advisory group also offers expert services in Internal Audit, SOX & Process Optimization, Mergers & Acquisitions, Technical Accounting & Financial Advisory, and Integration & Accounting Services.

Reach out today—let’s discuss how we can support your success!