Workday Implementation Powers More Efficient Reporting

Business Challenge

Transformational Events Strain Accounting and Finance Departments

Since 2020, one of our prominent clients in the FinTech space went public, navigated through the challenges of the pandemic and completed a major acquisition.

With the aggressive growth goals and challenges that come with becoming a publicly traded company, the organization realized that it was time to overhaul their outdated Oracle enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, which was limiting the efficiency of many of their business operations in accounting and finance and beyond. In addition, their ability to have accurate external financial reporting, along with accuracy for shareholders, has now become more important than ever.

After reviewing several ERP systems, they decided to replace the Oracle system with the Workday platform. As they were kicking off the design and go-live phase of the implementation, they realized that, among other gaps, they had no one internally with the specialized knowledge needed to captain the revenue recognition and SEC reporting areas. Additionally, they needed proven expertise to manage their software capitalization processes.

They turned to Aston Carter to find the niche talent they needed to help throughout the Workday implementation.

Our Solution

Our Deep Pool of Nationwide Talent

Since 2020, we’ve provided our client’s corporate accounting and finance teams with staff augmentation and temporary resources for various projects. But the conversion to Workday laid bare our client’s need for specialized expertise beyond their day-to-day staff essential for the Workday migration. This included subject matter experts (SMEs), project leaders and operational resource support for revenue recognition, SEC reporting, financial planning and analysis, accounts payable, and general ledger and cash accounting.

The two most consequential needs were project manager-level candidates with experience in revenue recognition (ASC 606) and SEC reporting. Because the positions could be handled remotely, Aston Carter was able to reach into our deep pool of nationwide talent to find the right person for the job.

The search yielded two consultants who had previously teamed up to complete a similar project. They reunited and, for 18 months during the engagement, assumed responsibility for leading our client's teams through data validation, design and testing for revenue recognition.

One of those two hand-selected SMEs was able to lead their revenue recognition (ASC 606) to support with:

• Implementing new software and migrating customer software contracts from Oracle to Workday to minimize financial risk exposure.
• Reconciling Oracle revenue and deferred revenue data to the documentation extracts proposed for migration, investigating differences and advising remediation required to be made prior to migration.
• Researching migrated contracts for revenue and deferred revenue differences.

Meanwhile, our SEC reporting SME collaborated with control owners to verify that all controls were performed prior to filing the 10Q/10K. In addition, he verified the 10Q/10K with supporting documentation and communicated the data conversion process from Oracle to Workday to ensure completeness and accuracy.

As the project was winding down, the departure of one of the client’s permanent accounting managers created an immediate need for a specialist with software capitalization and Workday expertise. Again, we were able to quickly identify and deliver a high-level, niche-specific resource to manage the software capitalization process (ASC 350 and ASC 985).

We also led a co-managed solutions project where the revenue recognition project manager was asked to handle an integral part of the implementation. Meanwhile, an Aston Carter team of contract accountants helped oversee the execution and reported it back to the client’s leadership team in a co-managed service. As a group, they were able to hit key benchmarks and keep the migration on track.