Enhancing value and building trust through your system transformation
Join us for a panel discussion centered on achieving measurable value from new technology and the importance of addressing risks and controls early.
Four key takeaways for system transformation
System transformations come in many forms — new enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, upgrading major systems or going through a mainframe modernization. With any of these, there’s a lot that goes into achieving the desired outcomes from a new system — everything from technical capabilities to achieving measurable value and helping drive larger transformation goals. As our August 2023 Pulse Survey showed, 88% of business leaders consider achieving measurable value from adopting new technologies a challenge to their ability to transform.
A recent PwC webcast on enhancing value and building trust through system transformation featured a panel discussion that included specialists from PwC’s Digital Assurance and Transparency and Enterprise Tech Solutions practices, along with executives from two companies who have many large transformations under their belts. Their conversation highlighted four steps to effective system transformation:
- Get key players aligned on project goals and elevating risk and controls from the start
- Put the appropriate people with the necessary skills on the project
- Make sure you have a clear view into your data layer
- Automate as much as possible to help enhance efficiency
Let’s dive into the details of each step.
1. Align on project objectives — and elevate risk and controls in every discussion
Panelists pointed out that, as with many things in life, you can’t please everyone and — unless you have an unlimited budget and no time constraints — your system transformation won’t likely give everyone all features or functionality they want.
Alignment among leadership and project teams can help you decide which capabilities can realistically be implemented at go live, and which ones may have to wait for a later phase or different system.
Project leads should have the backing from the executive team and empowerment so they can make tough decisions along the way. Alignment and scope conversations should include top executives and middle management — especially the folks driving day-to-day activities and utilizing existing systems. You should have a buy-in from everyone, along with a clear definition of how you are going to push it forward.
In addition to aligning on priorities, which can help you create a risk and controls roadmap, know that tradeoffs will typically be needed. Be sure you have a dedicated project team who can give it their full attention, rather than handling it as a side job. Leaders should align on — and communicate — key issues, like embedding controls, early on.
Controls should, of course, be considered throughout the project, but especially in the requirements and design phase. When you consider controls among the business requirements, it can translate to the design, build and ultimately into the user acceptance testing (UAT) scripts. Sufficient testing is part of any successful system implementation too — testing not just the functionality, but also that the controls are going to operate as intended once they are live.
2. Bring in the right people with the appropriate skills
Part of the alignment component includes integrating multiple stakeholders into project planning and oversight. They can offer upfront perspectives on risks associated with your system transformation before, during and after the project.
Your internal audit team should be brought in early, including during design phases and along the way at key milestones, as part of governance efforts and/or steering committee involvement/engagement. In addition, engaging your external auditor in an assess and recommend capacity can help proactively identify risks so you can build in future state controls as part of the implementation and help prevent control gaps or unnecessary rework after go-live. Your external auditor can play a key role in helping understand and assess financial reporting and entity risks.
3. Be sure you have a clear view into your data layer — and that you can keep it secure
Determining your data requirements is another crucial part of any system transformation, especially in terms of risks and controls. Is your data clean, property structured and ready to transfer from existing to new systems? Data should be an early consideration. Are you going to migrate all your data, or just some of it? Many organizations migrate everything, but you should determine what’s more efficient — especially if you have a lot of data that needs to be processed.
Data security is an area where it often pays to double down on strengthening access protections and other controls via automation.
4. Integrate automation to help gain efficiencies so you can reduce risk
System transformations present a prime opportunity to automate as much as possible. Increasing efficiency and addressing issues involved in moving to a new system — whether it’s testing controls or data or automating formerly manual processes — can boost efficiency. A common pitfall is trying to adapt a system to meet your specific needs and existing process requirements without looking at the opportunities to redesign, improve and automate those processes. In fact, automating certain processes and test scripts may be among the features that led you to select a specific system in the first place. If not, you can likely integrate automation around controls testing — for data security and integrity, for example.
Bringing it together
There’s a lot at stake with system transformations. Your business can unlock new potential and fuel future growth. Dedicate time upfront to align the team and bring in the right talent, spend sufficient effort on data and data security, and automate processes for the future state. Begin today and propel your organization toward its desired outcomes.
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