The Cure to Your Financial Close Bottlenecks

Main Challenges:

Disparate systems, manual processes and delays

Key Objectives:

• Eliminate manual efforts
• Improve productivity
• More informed management oversight
• Greater visibility and controls over financial processes

Return on Investment:

• Savings represent hundreds of thousands of dollars every year

Until Susan G. Komen implemented ReconNET, both headquarters and each individual affiliate were reconciling its own credit card transactions, and each used its own resources to do the work.

“Because each of these units had multiple merchant accounts and multiple revenue streams, the time required by each business unit for its task was significant, estimated at 120 people across Komen,” said Ria Williams, Susan G. Komen’s Director of Financial Services. This manual process also had a high potential for error. Once the reconciliations were complete, each business unit still needed to submit the revenue transactions to Komen’s ERP System.

A second area ripe for improvement at Komen was balance sheet reconciliations. “Our general ledger accounts at our headquarters were being reconciled monthly in Excel,” said Dawn Hooper, Susan G. Komen’s Director of Accounting Services. “However, the manual nature of the reconciliations introduced errors, review delays and uncertainty into the process.” In addition, historically, headquarters had performed balance sheet reconciliations for affiliate accounts on an annual basis during the consolidations for fiscal year close. With the implementation of an integrated ERP system in 2009, headquarters obtained the ability to complete balance sheet reconciliations more frequently than annually. However, finding a way to effectively and efficiently manage approximately 120 business units with approximately 40 balance sheet accounts continued to be a challenge.

Objective

The business began by streamlining its existing manual processes around credit card and general ledger reconciliations. Susan G. Komen required an automated solution that could eliminate manual errors and provide more timely, accurate data, improve overall productivity and allow for more informed management oversight from a central repository. Susan G. Komen also wanted a solution that would help define and then enforce a systemic approach toward all reconciliations and offer more visibility and control over its Affiliate’s financial processes.

Susan G. Komen chose Trintech’s ReconNET to reconcile its credit card transactions and Cadency Certification for its general ledger reconciliations.

Solution in Action

The implementation of Trintech’s Cadency Certification solution took approximately six weeks and offered the ability to reconcile GL accounts in groups, an automated workflow that eliminated manual error from the process, task-based notifications to ensure more timely certification, review and approval of GL reconciliations and an intuitive dashboard where management can identify potential bottlenecks before they occur.

It previously took 120 employees to manually reconcile Susan G. Komen’s credit card transactions, and revenue submissions to the general ledger were often delinquent. With ReconNET’s powerful matching engine, one person, who spends most of their time resolving a small number of exceptions, now accomplishes this work every day.

“These savings represent hundreds of thousands of dollars every single year,” said Williams.

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About Susan G. Komen

Nancy G. Brinker launched the global breast cancer movement in 1982. Susan G. Komen has invested almost $2 billion in its mission, working to end breast cancer in the U.S. and throughout the world.

Trintech Solutions in Use: ReconNET and Cadency Certification