Finance Package – Raymond James Ltd.

Situation

Recently ranked No. 3 on the Wall Street Journal’s “Best on the Street” Analysts Survey, Raymond James and its Canadian subsidiary, Raymond James Ltd. is one of Canada’s leading, full-service, investment dealers. Continued growth meant their Finance department’s current accounting system could no longer meet the growing demands of their business. This in combination with the need for more capable and versatile reporting, prompted Raymond James Ltd. to select a new financial accounting system.

Business Challenge

The ensuing deployment faced two challenges - the need to refine requirements and deploy the priority GL and Accounts Payable components in less than three months to coincide with the start of their new fiscal year; as well as the need for successful interfacing with detailed 3rd party system extracts.  Coupled with this were the demands placed on team resources and the schedule with the year-end financial audit.

Solution

Raymond James Ltd. engaged KLR due to KLR’s extensive project management best practices, familiarity with RJL internal project management methodology and specific experience with deploying financial and ERP systems. A formal but lean, project management approach was implemented with the vendor to support this rapid package deployment.

To ensure deployment in time for the new fiscal year, the project adopted tight scope and schedule management using a prioritized and phased roll-out approach. Detailed resource and integration planning of the installation, testing, training and vendor handover phases were critical to maintaining the time line.

Results
Priority GL and A/P components and associated training were delivered for the cut-over date followed later by the 3rd party system interfaces, Fixed Assets and Electronic Funds Transfer. Although the 3rd party system interfacing was part of the previous system, data could only be pulled in at a summary level.  Implementation of the interface occurred shortly after ‘go live’ with the new accounting system providing for uptake of detailed line-by-line transactions, which presented the opportunity for more detailed drill-down and analytics. 

Team members’ flexibility in balancing functional and project work combined with their strong understanding and ownership of their data and processes helped minimize surprises and issues post-deployment. Clear procedures, timing and communication between the vendor and the team around system updates and version control were important to achieving a successful outcome.

“KLR was able to provide the required accounting package project management expertise to meet our schedule and budget and KLR’s behind-the-scene internal project quality assurance reviews also provided Raymond James Ltd. with the benefit of KLR’s life experience managing hundreds of projects.”

Terry Ireland, VP Project Management Office, Raymond James Ltd.

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