Company Profile:

A major North American energy company with multiple businesses including Midstream, Upstream, Transportation and Energy Marketing.

Problem Statement:

The baseline support organizations (Finance, HR, and IT) were not optimally aligned with, nor appropriately sized to, the new business model. Multiple processes, systems and data definitions across business units limited the enterprise’s ability to aggregate information, increasing processing costs and errors. The company was ill-equipped to maximize opportunities and minimize risk since it lacked timely aggregated information across the organization. Company leadership recognized the need to establish common processes, common systems, standard reporting capabilities, and more efficient shared services.

Solution:

Established the PMO and performed program management for the project. Our management team assisted with the development of a business case, the design of processes, Oracle configuration, and a new planning and reporting architecture to support their various companies. The project included IT improvement via application development / maintenance process refinement, application solution service delivery model design and outsourcing, and application portfolio rationalization. Additionally, it included the redesign for the all major finance and related functions. The information design addressed common global chart of accounts design, FERC compliance, future state Sarbanes-Oxley process flows, common operational reports, standard financial reports, consolidation requirements, AFE/project management information, and a new information analysis and reporting common data warehouse. The project delivered:

• Shared Service Application development / maintenance process improvements
• Consolidated Shared Service application portfolio
• Application model that could be outsourced
• Roadmap and Business case with investment costs and business benefits
• Detailed design of future processes – flows, responsibilities, policy changes, process metrics
• Shared services and organization framework
• Oracle configuration based on best practices and business requirements
• Design and implementation of data warehouse, planning, and forecasting tools to better support common information planning, reporting and control

Results:

The framework to reduce the high cost associated with IT and finance processes was created via the reengineering of processes, organization efficiencies, and deployment of new technology. Improvements are: reduced costs in IT, reduced costs in finance; improved information consistency across the companies; improved cycle times in processes and reporting/closing; improved control; and improved information access and decision making.