Case Studies
Illustrative Experience
MorganFranklin has worked with commercial and public sector clients around the globe. Below you will find a sample of projects that highlight our diversity of expertise and commitment to surpass expectations. The following project snapshots highlight challenges, our work, and the impact to our clients.
Support needed to prepare memorandum and SEC registration statement View
Sector: Commercial
Market/Industry: Professional Services
Service(s): M&A and Transaction Services, Financial and Regulatory Reporting, Accounting and Audit Support
Challenge: Our client, a leading provider of information management and business process outsourcing services, announced that it was going to be acquired by a private equity firm. As a result of the proposed transaction, a portion of the consideration was to be raised through a debt offering under Rule 144A of the Securities Act of 1933, resulting in the need to prepare and offering memorandum and a follow-on SEC Registration Statement.
Delivery: The Company looked to MorganFranklin to provide technical accounting and financial reporting support as well as assist with the development of the required financial statements and offering documents. Our team worked extremely well with the investors, bankers and attorneys assisting with the development of the offering memorandum, including all Regulation S-X financial reporting requirements and ensuring the appropriate level of support and audit trail existed to provide for an efficient audit.
Impact: The Offering Memorandum was printed six weeks after announcing the proposed merger and engaging MorganFranklin to support the financial reporting requirements. As a result of our initial efforts, we assisted the Company with the preparation of the related Registration Statement with the SEC. Upon becoming a public filer, the Company turned to MorganFranklin to assess the design of the internal control environment and document the significant accounting and IT processes and controls as part of their Sarbanes-Oxley compliance requirements.
Multinational seeks help to remediate material weakness and improve reporting processes View
Sector: Commercial
Market/Industry: Energy
Service(s): Program Management Services, Business Process Re-engineering, Accounting and Audit Support
Challenge: We were asked by our client, a global power company, to help the client clear a material weakness related to the accounting for income tax and intercompany loans. The client had not maintained historical and current legal entity-based information for certain a significant number of holding companies and required help recreating the records and establishing the processes and systems required to manage the legal entity data going forward.
Delivery: Developed and coordinated comprehensive approach to resolve the material weakness and effectively manage all client legal entities. This included performing forensic accounting to establish opening balance sheets for all entities that had not previously been managed on a legal entity basis. Additionally, MorganFranklin helped the client to size the organization required to support the ongoing accounting responsibilities for a ten-fold increase in the number of entities under management. In order to optimize the organization size, MorganFranklin enhanced the existing systems infrastructure and proposed process changes that improved the efficiency of operational accounting such that the accounting staff only increased marginally.
Impact: The client has cleared their material weakness and has an efficient entity management system that is thoroughly understood by all internal and external stakeholders, and is compliant with all financial reporting regulations and requirements.
University seeks expertise to transform HR processes and operations View
Sector: Commercial
Market/Industry:
Service(s): Business Process Management
Challenge: Our client is an international leader in management education and research for the digital economy. As the organization grew, HR became overwhelmed with transactional responsibilities at the expense of developing and implementing a more strategic approach to serving its customers.
Delivery: Our team worked with the client to define and plan a more effective operating model. We also provided business process experience and PM skills to define the initiatives and projects necessary to implement the operating model. Our work supported the transformation to a more responsive HR Department.
Impact: Expanded scope of services without increasing headcount; improved customer service levels and reduced overlapping functions through the implementation of clearly defined roles and responsibilities for members of the HR team.
Global consulting firm requires large project PMO support View
Sector: Commercial
Market/Industry: Professional Services
Service(s): Program Management Services
Challenge: Our client was a global provider of strategic consulting, application services, technology solutions, and managed services. The client was looking to simplify and improve enterprise-wide revenue collection in order to reduce risks and increase efficiencies. Assitance was required to manage over 200 consultants to ensure project delivery.
Delivery: Our team provided program management and strategic planning/coordination support for critical, multi-dimensional projects; developed daily throughput metrics and created dashboard status reporting.
Impact: Decreased the cycle time to review and validate contract revenue, increased the productivity of the teams, provided real-time information to senior management and reduced estimated project expenses by 25%.
Global services firm aims to dramatically reduce SEC reporting cycle View
Market/Industry: Professional Services
Service(s): Data Management and Business Intelligence, Accounting and Audit Support
Challenge: Our client, a global multi-billion dollar professional services firm with multiple service offerings across multiple industry segments, had SEC reporting requirements but was unable to place reliance on their internal controls related to revenue recognition. The company needed to devise a plan to enable management and the auditors to obtain an appropriate level of comfort over revenue being reported in the quarterly and annual consolidated financial statements.
Delivery: MorganFranklin helped develop and implement a strategy to address this challenge. The strategy included developing automated tools to enable consistency with which the Company's programs and contracts were reviewed internally. These tools included a standardized approach to addressing the accrual of subcontractor costs, a repeatable review program that brought consistency to the approach taken to each contract review, and a tracking mechanism designed to address both the location and status of any contract binder that was currently under review. In addition to developing these tools, we supported the effort by bringing deep expertise in the area of revenue recognition and other technical accounting areas, to help the Company navigate effectively through both the interim review and year end audit processes.
Impact: From the point of our original engagement through completion of the project, the Company was able to reduce their 10K financial reporting cycle from 11 months to 2.5 months. Perhaps of greater significance was our ability to help the Company reduce the number of questions arising out of the review of contracts by the external auditors by over 50%, resulting in significant cost savings to the client.
Food manufacturer seeks transparency and accountability for CSR spend View
Sector: Commercial
Market/Industry: Manufacturing
Service(s): Data Management and Business Intelligence, Business Process Management
Challenge: Our client was a $30B global food manufacturer. The client's corporate social responsibility (CSR) and public affairs function was distributed across several functional areas. Obtaining visibility and transparency into the consolidated spend and operations was difficult. In addition, the budgeting process was fragmented and did not provide a complete view of enterprise spend for this activity globally.
Delivery: The MorganFranklin team quickly developed a new budget structure and process that would collect key spend information, allow for greater transparency into the corporate social responsibility function and establish financial accountability. Once the budget structure was in place, data was collected and analyzed in order to create performance measures and metrics. A capability maturity model was also created that allowed the senior management to monitor and manage the corporate social responsibility / public affairs function for each unit around the world.
Impact: The resulting structure and measures were applied across the enterprise to achieve a consistent view into costs and to better understand the activities undertaken at the global, regional and business unit levels. As a result of this initiative, the budgeting cycle time was reduced, the accuracy of the budget was increased, and funds were able to be reallocated to higher priority activities. Additionally, the improved structure resulted in greater buy-in and business accountability for the corporate social responsibility / public affairs function,. and the established key performance measures enabled management to provide better oversight and governance.
Satellite provider seeks post-merger SEC reporting and process improvement support View
Sector: Commercial
Market/Industry: Communications
Service(s): Accounting and Audit Support
Challenge: Our client was a global provider of fixed satellite services. A merger doubled the size of the company and resulted in the relocation of accounting functions as well as the turnover of a significant number of accounting staff. As a result, the company delayed two major filings and disclosed several material weaknesses in its internal controls over financial reporting.
Delivery: Led the development of the 2006 and 2007 SEC Form 10-K reports and 2007 SEC Form 10-Q reports. Activities included the preparation of the business, MD&A and footnote disclosures, compiling and analyzing financial data, and researching analyzing GAAP issues and SEC reporting requirements.
Impact: Established the processes and systems required to produce timely and accurate SEC filings. MorganFranklin also trained the in-house staff on financial reporting requirements and techniques, thus helping ensure accurate filings going forward.
Food distributor simplifies and streamlines finance and operational processes after merger View
Sector: Commercial
Market/Industry: Manufacturing
Service(s): Business Process Management
Challenge: Our client was a leading US wholesale food distributor. Accelerated growth through acquisition created disparate processes and systems across the organization. Process and data inconsistencies made the comparison of financial results across divisions difficult.
Delivery: Analyzed the finance and operational processes to identify process and system breakpoints. This approach highlighted the inefficiencies and gaps in the current environment that impeded the client from producing comparable results across divisions.
Impact: Implemented low-cost process improvements and system improvement strategies. Increased efficiency and lowered costs for decision support functions while improving the visibility into business results.
Satellite provider seeks enhanced usability and better management reporting from Oracle Financials View
Sector: Commercial
Market/Industry: Communications
Service(s): Enterprise Resource Planning
Challenge: The client, a provider of fixed satellite services worldwide, was not achieving the efficiency and usability of the Oracle Financial modules that was initially expected. This resulted from system issues as well as a lack of understanding of key functionality available in Oracle. A recent merger had put further pressure on the Oracle support staff as the user population doubled and half of this population was unfamiliar with Oracle.
Delivery: MorganFranklin provided operations support for Oracle Accounts Payable (AP), Purchasing (PO), General Ledger (GL), Accounts Receivable (AR), Fixed Assets (FA), i-Expenses, Oracle Workflow, and Oracle Time & Labor. MorganFranklin created new reports within Business Objects for supporting the management reporting as well as the payroll/accounts payable department to provide accrual reports and payroll processing reports. MorganFranklin was integral in the implementation of Oracle Time & Labor from a design and support perspective.
Impact: Substantially reduced the number of open Oracle issues and provided visibility into previously unrecognized functionality with Oracle Workflow and processing of AP transactions. Provided process documentation with training which assisted the users to reduce errors and increase efficiency in using the Oracle modules. Business Object reports provided improved visibility which improved the management of budgets and managing spend with and improving discounts from suppliers.
