Federico Design
The chart of accounts, the cost structure and the reporting model, decided by finance rather than inherited from a template.
Services
Enterprise Resource Planning implementation support
An Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) project fails in finance more often than in technology. I lead the finance workstream: the chart of accounts, the controls, the reporting, the migration, and the day-one numbers that have to be right.
5
SAP implementations led from the finance seat5
countries: Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela1
JD Edwards system stabilised after a difficult go-liveWhat this is
I am not the systems integrator and I do not compete with one. I am the person on the client side whose numbers have to be right on go-live day, and who therefore asks the questions the integrator would rather defer: what the chart of accounts has to support three years out, which reports actually get used, what reconciles to what, and who signs off the migrated balances.
I led the finance workstream in five SAP implementations across Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela, and later stabilised a JD Edwards (JDE) system that had gone live badly at Pierre-Fabre Brazil. The second kind of work — rescuing a bad go-live — is more common than anyone admits.
What you get
- A chart of accounts that serves management reporting, not only the statutory books
- Controls and segregation of duties designed in, rather than bolted on after the audit
- A migration plan with reconciliations, and someone accountable for signing the balances
- The reports the business actually runs on, available on day one
- A finance team trained on the system they will be living with
How it runs
Build and migrate
Controls, interfaces and the data migration, with reconciliations at every step and a named owner for the opening balances.
Go live and stabilise
The first close on the new system is the real test. I stay through it, because that is when the gaps appear.
The record behind it
Across eleven years at Colgate-Palmolive I led the finance workstream in five SAP implementations, in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. Chart of accounts, controls, reporting, go-live readiness. I was not the systems integrator; I was the person whose numbers had to be right on day one. Later, at Pierre-Fabre Brazil, the work was the other half of the same problem: stabilising a JD Edwards (JDE) system the finance team could not close on.
Questions about this work
Do you replace our systems integrator?
No. The integrator configures the system; I represent finance to them. Those are different jobs and the project needs both. What I do replace is the situation where the integrator is effectively deciding the chart of accounts because nobody senior in finance has the time to.
We are already live and the close is broken. Can you help?
Yes, and that is a common engagement. The first step is to find out whether the problem is configuration, data migrated badly, process, or people never trained — because the fix for each is different and companies routinely spend money on the wrong one.
Does this only apply to SAP?
No. Five of my implementations were SAP and one of my rescues was JD Edwards, but the finance workstream is the same discipline on any system: what the accounts have to support, what reconciles to what, what the controls are, and who signs the opening balances.
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A 30-minute call, in English, Spanish, Portuguese or Italian. No deck, no pitch — you describe the situation and I tell you whether I am the right person for it.