Case Study
Process optimisation and automated accounting for a tier-1 global Bank
Digital & Automation | Banks | London
The Background
- A tier-1 global bank wanted to automate a core accounting process which required data collection from many hundreds of individuals across the globe
- This data had to be reviewed and turned into accounting entries for posting once approved
- Impacted businesses wanted to see the impact on P&L to enable tighter decision-making loops
The Challenge
- Existing entirely manual process involved the population of spreadsheet templates which were then manually reviewed
- These reviews typically failed due to poor data quality requiring multiple loops to get the calculation inputs
- The accounting journals were calculated from the individual spreadsheets and posted meaning the P&L impact was only visible after a full month-end run
- Review and challenge after the close period resulting in considerable management attention
The Approach
- Implementation of a cloud-based Appian workflow to capture the required attributes with built-in data quality checks and validation
- Validation and lookups (such as system reference codes) enforced at entry point removing the need for repeated data checks later in the process
- Implementation of a materiality threshold for manual review and approval of the data, ratcheting up the threshold as confidence grew
- Automated generation of the posting journals and central collation in a visualised portal to assess total P&L impact prior to posting
The Impact
- 12 week total project time from initiation to go-live successfully rolling out to global user base
- Elimination of the dedicated process team reducing operational costs by $1m per annum and remaining tasks absorbed into other roles
- Move to random sampling and large item review positively received by auditors
- Positive relationship boost with business as review and challenge process moved to pro-active rather than re-active and gave time for course corrections
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