Due to finite resources, starting with a clearly defined improvement area scope may be paramount to a successful deployment—which may be further empowered with a comprehensive current-state assessment of the defined scope. It is essential to gain a clear understanding of current intercompany accounting pain points to prioritize improvement opportunities and select enabling technology tailored to your organization’s specifications. Failing to identify key pain points increases the risk of uninvestigated automation areas or disenchanted outcomes. Maturity assessments and transaction-level analytics are often deployed to identify and facilitate process improvement and technology enablement opportunities.

Intercompany technology should be used for its intended purpose and customized only when the increased value outweighs the associated incremental maintenance costs. Therefore, it is essential to select the right vendor to ensure the incoming technology’s use cases align with your organization’s specifications. This is where Deloitte and its alliances with many Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), and Financial Corporate Performance Management (FCPM) software companies bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to help clients achieve a return on investment for technology implementations.

Data integrity and standardization is essential to capture the full value of enabling technology. Before beginning your technology implementation, consider a data enhancement initiative to establish leading practices in areas including—but not limited to—master data management, chart of accounts structure, and global tax system strategy.

Consult key stakeholders to understand their intercompany automation technology business requirements to satisfy operational needs and statutory regulations. These stakeholders may include (but are not limited to) compliance, treasury, tax, finance, and IT departments. As noted in our previous blog post, “Why intercompany accounting is increasing corporate risk,” it is necessary for those affected by intercompany accounting issues to work together to solve the problem.

When building business requirements to inform enabling technology designs, the end user—including finance and IT—should remain top of mind. Finance technology should be designed for accountants (with the auditor in mind) and centrally governed by the IT department. Human-centered design is an effective approach to help ensure that the incoming technology reinforces and encourages positive behavior. A poor user experience may result in underwhelming adoption.

Technology implementation’s stakeholder impact may be far-reaching across the organization and disrupt established ways of working. It is essential to clearly define your change management strategy to achieve smooth adoption rates, end-user credibility, and compliance with local employee regulations.

Leading practice suggests that intercompany accounting activities are driven by globally adopted policies and procedures and may be supported by technology enablement, not the other way around. It is important to conduct a current-state assessment and consult accounting, compliance, treasury, tax, finance, and other key stakeholders to understand your organization’s processes prior to selecting technology solutions. Standard and clearly defined policies and procedures should cover the end-to-end intercompany process, including how transactions are created, approved, recorded, allocated, marked up, and eliminated. Deloitte elaborates on the concepts of redesign and technology transformation by applying an intercompany accounting framework.

Intercompany technology will directly or indirectly interact with multiple systems to exchange data. Your organization’s current data and system configuration should influence technology solution design decisions. A leading practice is to perform a current-state assessment to understand your current system’s architecture landscape and identify the optimal enabling technology placement. Your evaluation should incorporate upstream and downstream impacts to dependent systems.

Successful technology implementation requires adequate resources, expertise, and leadership sponsorship. Companies that find themselves tight on resources, short on the technical know-how, or inadequately supported by leadership are susceptible to over-relying on project partners. This back-seat approach often results in unmet expectations and missed project deadlines. Collaboration between the company and its partners is essential.