Our client’s parent company required financial reporting to be submitted by the third business day after month-end. However, the existing close process spanned 15 days, with several critical activities occurring well beyond the third day. Without major process changes, meeting the reporting deadline was not feasible.
Eliassen Group facilitated a full-day workshop to map all monthly close deliverables. We challenged the client’s management team to rethink task timing and ownership to enable a three-day close. As a result, non-essential tasks were shifted outside of the close window, and a new, streamlined, role-specific month-end close checklist was developed to support the revised timeline.
The client successfully aligned its close process with corporate reporting deadlines, achieving on-time financial reporting after just three cycles of the new approach. Increased cross-functional visibility improved coordination and accountability. The workshop not only addressed immediate challenges, but uncovered further optimization opportunities, with the content used to cross-train staff and enhance awareness of interdependencies across functions.