Cash Month P&L Variance Reduction - Forecast to Actual

Issue

Our client’s daily intra-month P&L report had significant variances when compared against the month end actual P&L results. These variances contributed to loss of confidence and trust between the corporate executives and the front and back office. Our objective was to reduce variation and re-establish confidence in the process, thus increasing executive trust in forecasts.

Solution

Because our specialists understood both the business functionality and technical implications around their issue, we quickly diagnosed the causes and provided effective solutions. Hundreds of reports were feeding the final P&L report that were either redundant or written incorrectly, producing incorrect daily P&L results. We sunset legacy reports and wrote an entirely new streamlined P&L batch report. We also wrote BI views to improve variance analyses and management reporting.

Result

The end result was a forecast to actual variance reduction from 30% to 5%, or approximately $3,000,000 - $5,000,000 per day in variances eliminated. This contributed to re-establishment of confidence in the process as well as increased executive level trust in forecasts.

 

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