Giulio Maresca

Led the assessment of the financial and statutory reporting architecture for a primary health insurance company.  This engagement was part of a large finance transformation program.  The outcome of engagement was a phased roadmap to improve the overall financial and statutory reporting processes.

Managed the analysis and design of a reporting solution for a global high-tech company. The legacy reporting system was based on PeopleSoft G/L with limited reporting capability. The new solution, which included Oracle Financial Management, OBIEE and Data Relationship Manager was able to cover all company reporting needs from transactional reporting up to high level management reporting in one architecture.

Business Results

• Create reporting architecture to consolidate all company’s reporting needs in one place
• Standardized company-wide master data
• Streamlined financial reporting

Managed a complete software evaluation and assessment for the implementation of a new web-architected financial consolidation capability at one of the largest pharmaceutical companies. Assisted the client with the following primary activities:

• Requirements Gathering
• Benchmarking & Gap Analysis
• End State Definition
• Vendor Analysis, Selection & Recommendation;
• Solution Conceptual Design
• Implementation Planning

With this new capability the company was able to retired 80% of the legacy tools and application devoted to reporting.

The Management of the client, a world leader mining company, wanted to address challenges posed, facilitate strategy execution and create the infrastructure required to support growth objectives. As a result, the client identified the Close and Consolidate Books and Report Actuals  an immediate priority.  The recognized that this process had become overly complex and cumbersome especially because mergers and acquisitions had significantly changed the size and structure of the organization. In addition, the regulatory control procedures introduced by the Sarbenes-Oxley Act, needed to be supported  by a robust set of functionalities to allow full auditing of users’ interaction with the application.  Therefore, my team led the software selection and technical delivery of a complete financial reporting and statutory consolidation solution. The technical scope included the design/build/test of a packaged web-based financial consolidation application supported by Hyperion Financial Management. The application was distributed to more than 30 subsidiaries of the company and our team delivered UAT and end-user training.

Business Challenges

• Rapid grow by acquisition
• Integration of many different ERP systems
• Re-think and improve the closing process
• Streamline control activities to comply with regulatory rules
• Spreadsheet explosion for data-entry and reporting
• Too many top-side adjustments not aligned with source systems

Business Results

• HFM as the book of records that integrates un-related data sources
• Achieve “one version of the truth”
• Detailed monthly Management Report including Intercompany matching and adjustments out day 9
• Robust workflow process management that tracks every user’s activity during the closing process
• Excellent user’s interaction with the web-based interface for data submission, data validation and reporting.

This project was a global initiative to bring together the diverse companies and operating units created through the merger.  The new reporting and planning system consolidated company-wide financial information and key performance indicators (KPIs).  The system allows the client to have a global, regional, company or business unit view of their financial status at any point in time.  Running the business as one global integrated company is extremely challenging given the IT infrastructure and business processes inherited from two very different historical companies. My team led the design, implementation and testing of the global planning and budgeting system.  This system was deployed worldwide to 300 locations.  We also delivered end-user training and UAT to more than 80 stakeholders.  The application was implemented with Hyperion Essbase and a web-based front-end.

Business Results

• Provided for a single repository of financial planning data
• Provided for consistency in language, data, etc.
• Linked plan to business strategy to achieve financial goals
• Increased ability to react to changes in the current business environment
• Provided for better decision making as a result of better, more frequent information
• Provided information for management to become more forward-looking and able to anticipate change
• Helped to reduce close cycle time and number of forecasting iterations

Developed the post-merger integration approach for financial consolidation, reporting, planning and forecasting applications for a major Hollywood studio. The client needed a temporary application able to report financial results of the two merged companies on day 1 after deal-close. The major challenge of this project was the limited time, but the project was successfully completed on time and on budget. The temporary consolidation and reporting application was developed using Hyperion Enterprise.

End-to-end implementation of a management reporting application for a leading Italian apparel manufacturing company.  The project included the analysis, design, build, test and deployment of a complex management reporting model to measure the financial performance of all brands and collections owned world-wide by the company.

Developed a Kaplan-Norton balanced scorecard model for a leading Italian chemical company.  This project included benchmarking other companies key business metrics with the ones of our client. The result was the definition of an innovative set of key performance indicators for the chemical industry.

Developed a three-day training course for the administration of Hyperion Enterprise to train junior resources.  This course was used to train over 30 internal resources and several client resources.

A leading multinational insurance company needed to reorganize the strategic reporting to track the key metrics that were critical to measure the overall performance of the business.  Therefore, we designed the concept of a Kaplan-Norton Balanced Scorecard tailored for the insurance business.  The results was the definition of a balanced set of key performance indicators that allowed the client to effectively measure financial and operational performance.

Designed and implemented the web site to present the market offerings and credential of the Hyperion Competence center.  This site was leveraged to present to prospect clients the capabilities of the Hyperion Competence Center.