Challenge

A private equity-owned operator of medical practices was struggling to perform a timely month-end close and produce quality reporting. The company grew rapidly through acquisitions, and each new practice came with a different set of accounting records and often lacked sufficient accounting staff.

Due to limited technological expertise, inconsistent file formats (PDF and Excel), and the absence of a centralized accounting software, the financial close process took two months to complete. Management needed one month to accumulate subsidiaries’ data and another month to manually consolidate and present financial results to the board. Even then, reporting was limited to just three metrics: revenue, EBITDA, and site visits – leaving leadership with an incomplete picture of key performance drivers.

The company required a comprehensive transformation of its accounting workflows and a new approach to its technology and data.

How We Helped

CrossCountry Consulting conducted a deep-dive current-state assessment to uncover blockers and operational challenges with a focus on transforming the monthly consolidation and reporting process.

Our subsequent engagement included:

  • Designing a new target operating state with reconfigured process flows tailored to the diversity in subsidiary reporting.
  • Automating 90% of manual data input with Power Query workflows.
  • Streamlining the compilation of the monthly financial reporting pack, reducing manual effort, and accelerating delivery timelines.

These new tools, designed and built in under three months, freed up a significant amount of time for the CFO, controller, and the accounting team, while improving the speed and quality of management reporting.

Results

The company’s accounting and finance teams immediately realized value in the form of:

  • 70% reduction in close time: Process automation and re-engineering simplified data extraction and consolidation, accelerating reporting across an expanded dataset. This was achieved through:
    • 360-degree visibility into financial metrics and KPIs: Access to a comprehensive set of metrics enabled more informed, data-driven decision-making across the organization. New metrics added to monthly reporting included:
      • Revenue by location, COGS, and gross profit.
      • Detailed SG&A expenses, operating income, and net income.
      • KPIs such as revenue per visit per location, visits per day per location, and expense category as a percent of revenue (i.e., salaries as a % of revenue).
    • Streamlined variance analysis: The corporate controller can now proactively identify and investigate specific variances at the subsidiary level.
  • Enhanced exit value: Clean, auditable adjusted EBITDA figures support future deal due diligence, reduce time in Q&A cycles, and mitigate potential value erosion due to unsupported EBITDA adjustments – strengthening the company’s position in a future exit.

The investment in this process optimization and automation project allowed management to build a scalable finance and accounting infrastructure, which can accommodate rapid future inorganic growth and maximize value at exit.