Automating Cost Allocation to Enhance Enterprise Business Management

Automating Cost Allocation to Enhance Enterprise Business Management

The Client

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Global Life and Health
Reinsurance Company

Employees

2,500 Employees

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Operations in 27 Countries

Revenue

$12.5 Billion in Revenue

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$60.5 Billion in Assets

The Challenge

A finance organization needed an automated way to allocate and invoice shared services costs across 20+ globally dispersed business units. The current process required subject matter experts to spend a wealth of time maintaining, editing, and generating shared cost allocations. The complicated Excel worksheet used to facilitate the process lost its usefulness and became so complex that only a few resources had complete command of its pivot tables, macros, and formulas. Additionally, the client was challenged to send and receive service invoices and business unit expenses in 20 different currencies. Each business unit wanted a more detailed view of their costs, but there was no way to efficiently accommodate their needs.

The Response

Maryville Consulting Group responded with an enterprise business management solution built on the market-leading, cost transparency platform, Apptio. We built the cost distribution model, generated reports, and automated the creation and distribution of invoices. Additionally, we automated complex calculations that incorporated the firm’s currency rate tables, markup calculations, transfer pricing tools, and weighted allocation methods – saving hundreds of internal labor hours while providing the different business units with the a detailed cost allocation model they needed.

The Process

Plan Allocations

Created an automated allocation model to distribute budgetary amounts across the fiscal year to allow year-over-year variance analysis

Actuals Allocations

Enhanced the budget allocation with the build of the actuals model, allowing for actuals vs. plan variance analysis on a month-to-month basis

Automated Chargeback

Leveraged the output from the actuals model to create 100+ automated invoices on a month-to-month basis

Forecasting Allocations

Building off of the budget and actuals models, the forecast model was created to allow for full variance across the three models

The Value

  • Automated the process to allocate and invoice shared services costs
  • Reduced labor required to plan, prepare, and generate shared service invoices to global consumers
  • Streamlined budgeting process with easily comparable budgeting strategies
  • Reconciled actual costs against planned costs
  • Increased transparency into cost allocation calculation
  • Improved efficiency, lowered labor costs while increasing accuracy and transparency

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