The organization had grown by acquiring veterinary businesses that each ran on different platforms, at different levels of process maturity. Closing the books took roughly twice as long as it should have, and even after individual entities modernized, group-level consolidation still happened by hand in spreadsheets. The presenting problem was an aging ERP. The real problem was an organization that had never built the shared infrastructure to operate as one company.
Case Study
Built once to be repeated: an ERP playbook for what came next.
A global pet health organization was consolidating five acquired veterinary businesses onto a single ERP platform in the middle of a pandemic. We led the change management, training, and program leadership that kept the rollout on schedule and gave the organization a playbook it could run again.
Engagement at-a-glance
Industry:
Healthcare
Organization size:
~ 30,000 - 50,000 employees
Services:
Change Management
Training & Adoption
Project & Program Delivery
Training & Adoption
Project & Program Delivery
The Challenge
Every entity could close its own books. None of them could close together.
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Platform fragmentation was blocking shared services
Five companies under one pet health division were each running their own systems and their own version of finance and accounting process. Without a common platform, the organization couldn't create the shared services it needed to operate efficiently across entities, and monthly closes ran long as a result.
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No playbook existed to repeat the work
The organization had been through a similar ERP rollout once before with a different group of entities, but had never captured a process it could reuse. With more acquisitions likely, leadership wanted this implementation to produce a defined tech stack, test scripts, and documentation the internal team could carry into the next one.
Our Approach
We built shared structure before kickoff, so five companies could run as one.
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1
Set up program governance and a shared tech stack before kickoff
Before the program formally started, we stood up the reporting structure and tooling the client could reuse on future rollouts, building directly on the sixteen improvement areas an earlier external audit had already flagged.
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2
Surveyed stakeholders early to catch friction before it spread
Our change management lead brought a framework she had already proven on a prior Oracle rollout with this client and began polling stakeholders early, segmenting responses by group so the team could see where resistance was building before it turned into a delay.
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3
Replaced upfront training with just-in-time reference tools
Training delivered six months before go-live had failed to stick on past projects, so we built quick reference guides and video vignettes tied to the accounting close cycle instead, giving process performers something to reach for in the moment they actually needed it.
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4
Monitored data throughput to catch stalled queues in real time
We built dashboards to track data feed volume against historical throughput, which caught a stalled accounts payable queue within a week of go-live. The client brought in temporary staff to clear it before it affected the close.
Value Delivered
A rollout the organization could trust today, and repeat tomorrow.
Delivered the ERP rollout a month ahead of schedule
The program was originally scoped for twelve months. We restructured the plan to hold to eleven, without cutting the deliverables leadership needed most.
Captured a reusable playbook for the organization's next rollout
The tech stack, test scripts, and documentation built for this project were designed from the outset to be repeatable, giving the organization a foundation for the acquisitions still ahead of it.
Protected the accounting close timeline through go-live
Close-cycle performance was treated as a non-negotiable throughout the project, and the organization avoided the kind of degraded close that often follows a major ERP transition.
Gave finance teams real-time visibility into data throughput
Dashboards built during the engagement let the organization see integration volume against historical norms, catching backlogs before they became close-cycle problems.
Results that reflect the work behind them.
5 1
Veterinary care businesses consolidated onto a single ERP platform
11 months
ERP implementation delivered, one month ahead of the original twelve-month schedule
1 week
Time to detect and begin resolving a stalled accounts payable queue during go-live
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