Accounting System needs met for Newly Acquired Division’s Integration into Corporate PeopleSoft Financial Applications

Challenge: Acquisition of Insurance Division required conversion of PeopleSoft Financials to corporate standard for a Fortune 1000 company. Divisional accounting did not have the “bandwidth” to participate in all corporate meetings or interpret corporate IT requests into the necessary tasks at the divisional finance and accounting level. This included reviewing business and technical requirements, testing and conversion strategy and support. Areas targeted for conversion included General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Asset Management, and mission critical custom bolt-on to base PeopleSoft system.

Solution: GAP Resources’ augmented accounting team for acquired company with project management, PeopleSoft, insurance accounting and IT expertise with two GAP Resources consultants who interfaced effectively with corporate and divisional IT and “translated” corporate business and IT requirements to the divisional accounting department. Scope included both North American and European units. Additionally, the consultants identified and monitored project tasks for Accounting personnel to complete, and facilitated risk and issue identification. The project included the following:

• General Ledger: Conversion of historic accounting data to corporate ledger utilizing new chart of accounts, testing existing automated interfaces to ensure system integrity, validating that critical ledger bolt-on continued to function in the new environment and meet required production time dependencies.
• Accounts Payable: Key activities covered conversion of existing vendor portfolio and testing and validation of key interfaces to insurance systems including automated vendor addition/update, automated interface of payments to both established and one-time vendors, and the return of check numbers to various insurance systems.
• Asset Management: Identification of assets to convert, including fully depreciated items. Validation of book value and accumulated depreciation as of date of sale vs. date of conversion (some months later) to ensure that depreciation met corporate requirements.

Benefits: GAP Resources consultants were able to assist with the broader project management activities, as well as perform detail tasks to facilitate successful project completion while not compromising accounting and financial reporting requirements.