A major dairy products chain undertook the project of converting from a legacy system (Ross) to SAP for all its accounting and reporting systems. It was scheduled to be a three year project starting with the Corporate Accounting general ledger system and would subsequently be rolled out to the 520 stores for reporting purposes in separate phases.
The company requested Relevante to backfill for the Corporate Accounting Assistant Manager. Relevante’s consultant undertook day to day responsibilities which included: managing & coordinating the preparation of monthly, quarterly and annual consolidated financial statements, the quarterly Shareholders Report as well as the monthly Key Financial and Statistical Information provided to the Board of Directors.
Other activities that Relevante’s consultant was involved with included:
Oversight of all aspects of the automated financial and tax Fixed Asset system (GEAC).
Analysis of certain key corporate accounting reserves (closed stores, legal contingencies, environmental liabilities and dead site costs).
Cash flow and qualitative analyses to assess the need to record the impairment of long-lived assets (SFAS 121).
Assist the Corporate Accounting Manager and Controller in fulfilling all requirements associated with the annual external audit of the Company’s financial statements.
Calculated executive stock options and coordinated the exercise of these options with the legal department.
Generated and distributed the Weekly Fuel Gross Profit Estimate, and reconciled differences between estimated and actual gross profit.
The SAP conversion took place in June 2006 but it was not a seamless transition. The client went directly into production in SAP without running a parallel close. The actual to budget reporting package (BW) was inaccurate and the majority of the BW reports were not even written. The consultant assisted the BW team in writing the revised actual to budget reports and also assisted with problems in the Payables module which resulted in rectifying an exorbitant monthly accrual.
There was a smooth transition upon the return of the incumbent Assistant Manager. The consultant worked with the incumbent to address any and all transitional issues. Even though the client is in a cost containment mode, the consultant communicated his desire to return for any future engagements.
