Engineering & Construction
SITUATION
Engineering and construction company needed help streamlining its processes and reducing its financial and administrative costs, to increase overall profitability.
DRIVER GOAL
- Reduce financial and administrative operating costs by $4 million.
- Reduce the financial closing cycle from more than 20 days to 9 days.
RESULT
- Reduced financial closing cycle to 8 days.
- Delivered $5.8 million - $9.5 million annualized savings—a project return ratio of 4.9:1 to 7.9:1.
Case Study
Reduce Overhead Costs & Optimize Profitability
Issue
A major engineering and construction company engaged The Highland Group to assist in streamlining its overhead processes and reducing its financial and administrative costs, which were cutting into overall profitability and taking resources away from the operating side of the business.
Highland Approach
A Discovery and Design process yielded a list of prioritized savings opportunities and a roadmap to address them. Cross-functional teams equipped with cost reduction tools tackled a variety of inefficiencies and, in the process, learned to build upon and sustain improvement initiatives going forward.
Actions Taken
- Initiated a goal roll-down and translation process.
- Installed a centralized processing capability for Accounts Payable and Billing.
- Designed and implemented a new financial closing cycle process.
- Completely revised the financial reporting process, which improved accuracy and efficiency.
