The organization had relied on a legacy platform never built to function as its financial system of record, forcing teams across the business to build manual workarounds just to close their books each quarter. Leadership had selected a new ERP platform years earlier and had recently increased its budget and governance oversight to push the effort forward. What the organization actually lacked wasn't a technology decision. It was a way to align the outside implementation vendors, each delivering a separate piece of the puzzle, into one coordinated effort.
Case Study
How four disconnected vendors became one team on a five-year ERP overhaul.
This insurance and financial services organization had spent years trying to replace a legacy platform that could no longer close its books on schedule. We stepped in to align its outside implementation vendors and keep a five-year modernization effort moving toward go-live.
Engagement at-a-glance
Industry:
Financial Services and Insurance
Organization size:
~ $275B in company assets & 5,000 employees
Services:
Enterprise System Implementation
Enterprise PMO & Portfolio Management
Digital Transformation
Enterprise PMO & Portfolio Management
Digital Transformation
The Challenge
Four vendors building the same system. Almost none of them were talking to each other.
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Closing the books took a week of manual workarounds
The legacy system had never been built to serve as the organization's true financial system of record. Teams across the business had spent years building their own manual processes and side calculations just to get the numbers to close each quarter.
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Business knowledge that lived in people's heads, not documents
Many of the 52 source systems feeding the new platform had no documented data flow. Requirements existed as institutional memory, which meant building anything new first required capturing what people already knew but had never written down.
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Four vendors building in isolation
Multiple vendors and contractors were each delivering separate pieces of the implementation without a shared structure connecting their work, and the organization didn't have the internal project management capacity to hold it together on its own.
Our Approach
Bridging the vendors and fifty-two source systems into one coordinated build.
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1
Stepped into a five-year initiative already underway
Joined a program with years of history and spent the first few weeks getting oriented on scope, stakeholders, and the workstreams already in motion, before taking on delivery leadership.
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2
Documented the business rules that had only ever lived in people's heads
Worked with departments across the organization to translate undocumented data flows and institutional knowledge into structured business requirements the technical teams could build against.
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3
Organized four outside vendors into functioning delivery units
Brought multiple vendors and other contractors into a coordinated structure, closing gaps in project management, business analysis, and technical testing capacity the organization didn't have internally.
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4
Built a governance cadence to keep the program on track
Introduced monthly refinement sessions and executive workshops roughly every two months to track releases, testing sign-off, and audit readiness as the program moved toward go-live.
Value Delivered
A five-year modernization effort leadership can finally track and trust.
Organized four outside vendors into one delivery team
Brought multiple vendors and other contractors together under a shared structure instead of four disconnected workstreams.
Turned undocumented institutional knowledge into usable requirements
Captured data flows that had only ever existed in people's heads and translated them into documentation the technical teams could build against.
Built the release and testing cadence a five-year program needed
Established a recurring rhythm of releases, sign-offs, and refinement sessions in place of the ad hoc structure that had slowed prior efforts.
Gave leadership clear visibility into a program many hadn't been able to track
Provided executives with consistent, clear status updates across every independent workstream during regular leadership meetings.
Results that reflect the work behind them.
52
Source systems consolidating into a single financial system of record
4
Outside implementation vendors organized into one coordinated delivery structure
5-years
The major enterprise transformation program has been running toward its target go-live date
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Work With Us
The firms that move fastest don’t wait for clarity. They create it.
We help leadership teams cut their ambiguity, align around what matters, and build the momentum to transform their business.