And this big company was a highly regulated financial services company whereas the new start-up, while serving as an adjunct to that industry, was not subject to the same regulatory constraints, nor were the key performance indicators the same for the two businesses. It needed its own financial management systems and processes to have healthy and proper insight into performance and control for business purposes; and yet it also needed to be able to report to the owner (the large company) in a manner that could properly report according to its regulatory requirements. It must achieve this in the face of the typical constraints on resources of a small business, i.e., limited financial resources and trained human expertise to use, run, and manage the new system. This was the business situation.
The project was to understand the internal and external business and technical requirements, survey the marketplace for solution providers (including doing due diligence and short-listing the preferred providers), go through a sourcing/down-selection process, lead management in making their final selection, then implementing the new system. In many ways this was like a typical sourcing-vendor selection and systems integration project. However, it was complicated by the specific business needs and constraints of the small company coupled with the systems tie-ins and compatibility issues with the large company. The subsidiary business need of limited capital and growth and scalability plus the data transfer compatibility requirements of the parent meant the system needed to have a low cost of entry, systems scalability and flexibility priced in a way that is tied to growth, and customization characteristics that would enable meeting the data transfer and reporting needs of the parent company.
Our team found a uniquely robust SaaS system provider, that had required minimal upfront cost and no new infrastructure requirements (all of which shown on the books as an expense not the balance sheet), was priced by user, had lots of hand-holding support for a slims internal staff, and exceptional technical data transfer and report writing flexibility. The client leadership embraced our recommendation and the implementation went well, contributed to by the SaaS characteristics.
Our team has deep expertise in the practical business problems, internal financial management and systems requirements, and the ability to navigate both small business issues and large company ones.