From Bottleneck to Breakthrough
Empowering the Field & Office with Real-Time Data Insights
Project Snapshot
Chicago, IL - A month-long AP cycle was delaying cost visibility, hindering forecasting, and causing the company to miss vendor discounts. Palmer's process and expertise helped create the clarity and momentum needed for the team to uncover inefficiencies, reimagine their workflow, and shift their mindset from maintenance to optimization.
Our Tailored Approach
We brought together all process stakeholders and participants and facilitated a detailed current state walk-through. Despite the known costs of the process taking 30 days, the team still struggle to see where it could be improved. So, Palmer helped them see the process through a new lens, examining the time attached to each task. The insight was striking: the approval and posting tasks took 20 days.
With Palmer's help shifting the team's perspective, they began to understand that what they had long accepted as "normal" in fact had significant costs and risks. That delay alone was a major factor in preventing field teams from accessing accurate cost data, limiting their real-time decision-making, making it difficult to bill costs timely, and making forecasting unreliable.
This new clarity and perspective gave the team energy and motivation to explore and create valuable, innovative solutions.
Impact & Outcomes
Palmer collaborated with the client to redesign the AP process - streamlining approvals, optimizing imaging workflows, and configuring systems to support a faster, more transparent flow of information. Once the redesigned business process was implemented, the GC's AP timeline dropped from 30 days to just 5 - a 75% improvement. This allowed them to:
- Take advantage of vendor discounts and improve cash flow with timelier costs billings.
- Provide project teams with access timely, accurate cost data to make more informed decisions in the field.
- Give leadership greater visibility into near real-time data for improved cash flow forecasting.
But perhaps the most valuable outcome was the mindset shift. The team began to see their business processes not as fixed, but as strategic tools they could shape. The connected back-office improvements to field performance and profitability - and walked away as champions of continuous process improvement.
"Palmer helped us improve the process, but they also helped our Accounting team make the connection between their work, project success, and leadership's work. They're a much more empowered team because of it."
- Client's CFO