The setup
Configuration between finance and FP&A experts
No integration specification to write, no external provider to select. The platform is configured by the EPMind teams working directly with your key users, without requiring a third-party systems integrator.
What the configuration covers
What those few weeks contain
The platform is technically set up with its starter kit in a few days, then configured and adapted to your needs in a few weeks. Here is what they contain, in what order, and where they stop.
The configuration workstreams, in order
The platform is technically set up in a few days; configuration then runs workstream by workstream, with your key users.
Technical setup of the platform, with its starter kitA few days
Source systems and data brought inA few weeks
Entities, charts of accounts, account mapping, and analytical dimensionsA few weeks
Financial statements and calculation rulesA few weeks
Workflows, roles, and access rightsA few weeks
Functional testing and acceptance testing with your teamsA few weeks
Change managementafter that, with no fixed deadline
Data and reference data
- Source systems identified and brought in
- Entities and charts of accounts configured
- Account mapping and analytical dimensions
- Calculation rules
Financial statements
- Income statement, balance sheet, cash flow statement
- The reporting income statement built on the analytical dimensions
- Calculation rules
- Charts
Workflow and security
- Collection, approval, and review workflows
- Roles and access rights
- Confidentiality levels
- Import automation started, together with your IT department
Testing and handover
- Functional testing
- Acceptance testing with your teams
Adoption
Configuration happens with your teams, not instead of them
Our teams configure, but they do not work in a vacuum. Your finance key users and your contacts in each entity are in the loop from day one.
During configuration
It is your key users who decide the business rules, approve the account mapping, and acceptance-test the reports. Our teams configure; they do not decide in their place.
At the end of the configuration
Your teams are not handed a tool they have never seen: they know the choices that were made, and where to go back to them.
After that
Once the configuration is done, the change management period opens: rolling out the new processes, and making the tool fully your own. How long that stage lasts varies with the organization, and with the resources mobilized — internal, external, or both.
That is what makes the third component optional. FP&A support is justified when you lack the resources to carry the change through. Self-sufficiency is not a goal to reach after deployment: it is the condition the deployment runs in.
What the configuration does not cover
A few examples of the work groups usually take on after the initial configuration. On each of them, EPMind helps carry the improvements through and makes them tangible.
- Cleaning up your data
- Analytical data is usually where this comes up. There is no need to do it beforehand — quite the opposite: EPMind quickly shows what needs correcting or reallocating, in what order, and for what gain — see below.
- Redesigning your reporting or your analytical view
- Deploying EPMind is often the moment to rethink how performance is read, and the analytical dimensions that follow from it. History and tool constraints sometimes have unexpected consequences on the quality and the relevance of the dimensions available, and therefore on how performance itself is read. The deployment is sometimes what triggers a deeper reflection, and then what supports it.
- Redesigning your accounting closing processes
- Harmonizing practices, revisiting allocations or roles is a project in itself — one that is often seen as monumental. EPMind makes that project markedly easier to run, and to carry through close after close.
- Changing your close or consolidation options
- The methods and options you have chosen remain yours. That said, setting up EPMind can raise questions, and lead you to revisit earlier choices.
- Reconfiguring or replacing your systems
- Your ERPs, your management tools, and your warehouses stay in place, and nothing is changed in them: no field to add, no dimension to create. The platform works with what exists. And here too, where it applies, EPMind can help bring to light configuration fixes worth making.
- Change management
- It starts when the configuration ends. Formalizing the new processes, communicating and training the teams, adapting what needs adapting: change management is a decisive stage, to be run internally, with or without outside support.
How it runs
How this works in practice
The configuration is run together, between our teams of experts and yours. On our side, two teams that bring together the same disciplines — finance, consolidation, accounting, FP&A, and the tool itself. On yours, a few conditions, settled at the scoping stage.
How we work
The deployment and functional configuration team, working directly with your teams and key users
This is your point of contact throughout the deployment, and it speaks the language of finance people.
- Functional configuration of the platform
- Business rules decided with your key users
- Technical and methodological support for your teams
- Daily progress tracking, and acceptance testing with you
- Coordination with the steering committee
The support center
A center of expertise that industrializes recurring operations, backing up the deployment team.
- Initial configuration of the platform
- Source data brought in and checked
- Recurring operations industrialized
What do we need to succeed?
- An executive sponsor, and a strategy committee
- Shareholders, the CEO, and the CFO aligned on the approach. That is what holds a project together when a decision has to go up.
- A steering committee and a project contact on your side
- Functional owners who are available, and someone who coordinates on your side. Clear governance is the single biggest factor in holding the timeline.
- Access to the finance teams
- The ability to talk with central finance and with the entities: they are the ones who decide the business rules and acceptance-test the reports.
- Access to the system owners
- A contact point in IT, for access and security rules. Less than a conventional integration project, but not none.
- Access to the data
- A read-only service account, a drop point for an extraction robot, or simply the extract your teams already produce — depending on the source.
None of these conditions is a mid-project surprise: they are settled during scoping, before any commitment. Your IT department is involved, but it does not carry an integration project — it opens access, signs off on the security rules, and checks that the arrangement complies with internal policy.
A question that comes up
Do I need to clean up my data before starting?
No. If anything, the opposite: through the integrity checks, the account mapping, and the reconciliations it runs, setting up EPMind brings out, from the very first imports, what is wrong, where, and what it entails on your statements.
The cleaning, correcting, and updating work is guided and tracked as a result — and, above all, done in the light of the latest choices made. Imagining it done beforehand means working blind, and even risking doing it twice.
The setup is the second of the three components
By the end of configuration, your teams have a platform plugged into your sources, statements they have acceptance-tested, and business rules they have decided. That is where this page ends — and, for many groups, where it ends full stop. FP&A support comes in addition, if the timeline or your internal resources justify it.
- Required
The platform
A platform connected to the systems you already run
- Required
The setup
Configuration, carried out by our finance and FP&A experts
You are here
- Optional
FP&A support
Extra help, taken on if your needs justify it
Sizing is settled at the first conversation
It depends on the number of entities and the number of sources to connect.