Using the cloud to unlock value in the finance function for Eaton, a power management provider

SOLUTION

Focusing an eye on strategic opportunity and building a platform for future growth

In order to grow, Eaton knew its controllership activities needed to become more efficient. To make that happen, we helped Eaton revamp the highly manual, time-consuming controllership activities related to reconciliations and reporting, and worked together to devise broader business strategies that would position the company for future growth. The project involved a cross-section of disciplines, from risk assurance to analyzing investments in new software capabilities and digital accelerators. As part of this effort, Eaton discovered that some accounts could be reconciled less frequently, while critical accounts could be kept on a monthly schedule. Eaton was also able to reduce manual oversight of the reconciliation process, saving the company money and limiting mistakes.

Eaton also benefited from a purpose-built financial consolidation solution that offered a streamlined number of consolidation entities, provided the ability to drill back to Oracle and SAP ledgers, reduced data reconciliation efforts due to consistent data feeds from the source systems and enabled a robust data archival process.

Leveraging automation to improve performance

Eaton wasn’t just able to more quickly complete its monthly accounting tasks, it used automation and advanced business intelligence tools to reduce the number of reconciliations and standardize reports and processes. It used risk ratings to reduce manual oversight and get a clearer, real-time picture of its finances, freeing up employee time normally spent on repetitive, menial activities. Newly created dashboards now show if reconciliations are late, what trends look like month-to-month and if any red flags arise. And Eaton has taken steps to help ensure all of these are easy to use: Through its university program, the company rolled out training sessions for the new cloud-based system worldwide, enabling users to be as productive as possible from the start.

An alliance with Oracle streamlines a big move to the cloud

The cloud was the technological key to making these changes possible, but migrating Eaton’s financial consolidation and reconciliation processes to Oracle’s cloud-based systems initially felt daunting. No service “just works” out of the box, and Oracle Cloud is no different: Eaton identified a number of issues or gaps within the Oracle Cloud framework that needed to be addressed for its processes to work correctly. Our alliance with Oracle mitigated those gaps—both by developing new processes for Eaton and by working directly with Oracle to roll out new features.

RESULTS

Clear financial benefits, one year later

Completed on time and under budget, Eaton modernized the in-scope financial processes and is already reporting positive results from consolidating its applications and data stores into a single repository. Eaton is saving time and money through automation and process efficiencies. Eaton is also able to negotiate lower rates with its financial auditors as the information they need to review is more readily available.

And Eaton is just getting started. While it has successfully revamped its financial close and compliance functions, opportunity awaits in additional finance functions, where a migration to the cloud stands to offer even greater benefits.