Keane Announces Financial Fast Close Services for Use with SAP® Applications
19 July 2010
Offering Helps Customers Achieve a Fast and Reliable
Financial Period-End Close
Boston, MA – July 19, 2010 - Keane a U.S.-based IT services firm, today announced a new enterprise performance management offering from its Enterprise Application Services practice. Keane’s Financial Fast Close™ Services offering is a finance-function, process-driven framework designed to identify and mitigate process risks, and eliminate bottlenecks commonly associated with period-end financial close activities. The service offering focuses on streamlining and integrating processes for reporting, budgeting and forecasting.
The services offered by Keane support SAP AG’s (NYSE: SAP) world-class financial and business applications, focused on delivering a cohesive end-to-end financial close process. Financial Fast Close Services leverage SAP® ERP applications, including the SAP Financial Closing cockpit; the SAP BusinessObjects™ enterprise performance management (EPM) solutions, including the SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation application; and governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) solutions, including the SAP BusinessObjects Process Control application.
The financial close process is widely considered the engine that generates time-critical information leveraged by organizations’ key stakeholders. Keane’s Financial Fast Close Services help CFOs and entire finance organizations create an automated, standardized dashboard serving as a single point of control. The overall solution increases the speed and reliability of the financial close by simplifying time-consuming, error-prone tasks, improving finance functions and processes, and helping finance organizations adapt to business changes and consumer demands within the market.
The arrival of Keane’s Financial Fast Close Services is especially timely considering the anticipated SEC decision due in 2011 to adopt updated global accounting standards, a move that will help U.S. issuers attract more foreign investments and save on audit fees. The convergence to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), set to take place at the earliest in 2015, could have major time and expense implications for U.S. companies. The Financial Fast Close Services offering is agile enough to help companies streamline monthly financial close initiatives over the course of this conversion, ultimately reducing total cost of ownership and eliminating the need for solutions outside the SAP portfolio.
“Each Financial Fast Close Services implementation is fundamentally consultative in nature, helping to improve finance functions and processes along the entire life of the engagement,” said John Tupy, vice president of sales, for Keane’s Enterprise Performance Management and Governance, Risk and Compliance practice. “With the IFRS conversion approaching, our main focus is to offer CFOs a service that saves money, time and frustration, all while streamlining the approach to achieving aggressive financial close deadlines through the implementation of SAP solutions.”
Ideal for organizations looking to accelerate the financial close process cycle time while maintaining high-quality results, Financial Fast Close Services is implemented over a series of in-depth steps calibrated to help ensure a successful process from initial design and planning stages all the way through to “go-live” execution. Keane lends functional and technical expertise throughout the entire implementation process, assessing project action plans and dashboard design in order to define the technical and functional steps needed to build the framework. Ongoing performance monitoring and policies, combined with finance function standards underpin the entire framework of the Financial Fast Close Services, helping in the continuous evaluation and improvement of processes while setting parameters for use.
“The ability for organizations to close their books quickly and report accurate financial information to stakeholders is more important than ever,” said Martin Naraschewski, vice president, Finance Solutions, SAP. “Keane has brought all of its domain expertise and experience together to create a services-based offering to help customers implement SAP’s market-leading, end-to-end financial close solutions. In doing so, customers can manage their closing cycles more effectively, lower costs and improve quality.”
About Keane
Keane is an IT services firm headquartered in the U.S. with more than 12,000 professionals worldwide. For 45 years, Keane has been an Application Services specialist with distinguished project management credentials. Today, we offer a flagship suite of Application Services, as well as Infrastructure and Business Process Outsourcing solutions delivered through onsite, nearshore, and offshore resources.
Visit www.keane.com to learn how our projects, managed services, and outsourcing engagements deliver value for a range of businesses and government agencies.
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