Managing a Finance and Accounting Transformation to Drive Bottom Line Impact

Executive Summary

A top-tier oilfield service company engaged Everest Group to help it turn a struggling change management initiative into a key component of the overall success of its finance and accounting outsourcing (FAO) transformation success. Highlights of Everest Group’s expert assistance include:

• Designed a repeatable end-to-end change management approach that focused on long-term results
• Engaged a broad range of key stakeholders to overcome entrenched divisional barriers
• Developed effective communications and training through close collaboration with client experts
• Rigorously tracked delivery and results to show the positive return for the client

The Client’s Challenge

The client was undertaking an ambitious program to consolidate and outsource multiple transactional accounting functions around the world. While the program required company-wide standardization of processes, the client’s entrenched divisional organization structure and considerable process variation across operations in more than 90 countries added a significant layer complexity. Adding to the challenge were a portfolio of simultaneous initiatives – from the overhaul and upgrade of key IT systems to a major reorganization of the company’s organization – that competed for time and attention, and strained the organization’s ability to absorb a rapid pace of change.

The client team assembled to meet this change management challenge was motivated, but overwhelmed. Channels of communication did not effectively reach across the client’s decentralized organization, and competing priorities hampered efforts to collaborate with key experts on the development of messages and materials. Additionally, the pace and demands of the project had all resources focused on the achievement of tactical objectives and management of day-to-day issues. The result was a frantic and, at times, haphazard approach to change management that was deteriorating as the project expanded and moved forward.

Insight to Action

Knowing change management is an effort that must be pursued over the long term, Everest Group advocated a broad-based, systematic approach that focused on the end goal of a smooth transition to the new systems and processes. One of the first steps was engaging senior project leadership and securing greater support for the change management team from outside the immediate project to include key stakeholders and experts. This enabled the change management team to leverage these leaders as a group of high-level advocates to clear channels of communication and effectively deliver key messages. Everest Group worked with project leadership to remove barriers to participation by knowledge experts, thereby ensuring messages and materials were not developed in a vacuum.

The next critical step was designing an end-to-end change management timeline that covered pre-transition preparation, go-live implementation, and post-transition support. The process was modular and repeatable to ensure the change management team could begin with focused areas and gain momentum over time with early wins. Achieving success with a scalable, repeatable process in initial transitions produced blueprints the client could leverage in subsequent transitions. And continuous refinement and ongoing tracking of progress and results completed the core change management capabilities.

Impact

Everest Group’s insight in advocating that the client step back from the day-to-day demands of the  initiative and instead focus on the long-term helped the change management team establish a repeatable, end-to-end approach that has become the model for similar projects within the client organization. Regular meetings of the “outside” stakeholder group quickly evolved into a dependable mechanism not only for delivering project messages to the broader organization, but also as a channel for feedback as the transitions began to impact additional locations. Communications and training materials that had been largely ad-hoc were thoroughly revised and consolidated into a central archive for easy access and repeatable use by the entire team. With help from Everest Group, the team rigorously tracked delivery and results to show the positive return on their efforts.

Early success helped build confidence and establish credibility for the change management team that compounded the benefits of the long-term approach. From an overworked group scrambling to support day-to-day operational objectives, the change management team emerged as key contributors to the success of the project. The change management work stream was closely coordinated with the transition teams at every stage of the project, and ensured that communication and training implications were considered as part of major decisions. By continually refining materials and messaging to incorporate lessons learned, the team was instrumental in preventing repeat mistakes. Even well into the post-transition period, project leadership looked to change management as a first line of defense when problems arose.