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Preparing a sales organization for a high-growth spinoff

By transforming the client’s sales strategy and operations, KPMG made the difference in a medical technology carve-out

Client

Medical device manufacturer

Industry and sector

Medical technology, advanced imaging

Primary goal

Create a powerful, stand-alone sales function for a newly formed subsidiary

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When an acquisition doubles your revenue in your largest market, there are some big numbers at play—especially when you’re a $48 billion CPG company. And the bigger the numbers, the bigger the impact of every strategic and tactical decision you make. You can’t afford to have your visibility clouded and your decision-making hampered by having two disparate financial operations functions each with its own systems, software, and people. So, when a global CPG company found itself in this situation, it called on KPMG to drive fast, smooth, cost-efficient integration of financial operations.

Key outcomes

1

Increased engagement 

and global alignment between cross-functional teams

2

Greater visibility

 into consolidated spend driving meaningful insights and more proactive decisions

3

Days shaved off

the monthly close cycle

4

More accurate

revenue and sales forecasting

A medical device manufacturer specializing in advanced imaging technology decided to spin off one of its smaller businesses and concentrate fully on its core products. This carve-out operated in more than 200 countries with a complex portfolio and well-known brand, and the client needed to reassess its operations to ensure long-term growth. To assist, KPMG brought together its Deal Advisory & Strategy and Customer Advisory teams to help design and implement the systems, technology, people, and processes required for the venture’s success. In less than a year, KPMG teams helped create a sustainable stand-alone organization that included new, independent go-to-market capabilities.

Key outcomes

Making a measurable difference

  • Conducted a current-state assessment of the sales organization
  • Refreshed go-to-market and channel strategy across more than 200 countries, establishing exit plans in more than 50
  • Revamped the partner selection process and established new partner programs in 39 countries
  • Conducted detailed examinations of the lead-to-cash process globally to inform requirements for net new Salesforce.com and SAP implementations to avoid bookings and revenue disruption
  • Designed and implemented automated lead-to-cash processes for all countries
  • Developed the future sales operations operating model 

Client transformation journey

Click on each part of the journey to learn more about our client’s transformation.

Client transformation journey

Before

Poor visibility threatened business objectives.

Acquiring a large organic food and beverage business helped a global CPG company expand its operations and nearly double its revenue in the U.S. However, as with most mergers, the integration posed some challenges. Two disparate IT environments with different accounting and reporting models, separate enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, and multiple business intelligence (BI) tools required extensive manual intervention and offline data manipulation, preventing uniform reporting and analysis. Data was trapped in silos. Visibility was insufficient. A new CFO and the finance and accounting teams lacked the insight to support effective forecasting and both strategic and tactical decision-making. In a sector as competitive and fast-changing as food products, this company needed to increase visibility quickly.

After

Unified financial operations support global success.

While this CPG company’s business is spread across two continents (and originates from a number of acquired companies), its financial operations are now centralized and unified. A cloud-based platform extracts and loads data from numerous global sources, then configures and stores it in a central location. Accounting staff across multiple back offices work within a single governance structure and with a single set of streamlined processes, enabling effective reporting and supporting a swift, accurate close. Across the enterprise, visibility is excellent, and insights are at the ready, because analysts can perform real-time calculations and drill down swiftly to the meaning behind the numbers. Unified financial operations helps this $48 billion player predict accurately, plan effectively, and act swiftly—all crucial in a sector where windows of opportunity close as suddenly as they open.

Future

A strong foundation that can keep pace with continued growth.

There will be more acquisition targets in the company’s future. And with a cloud-based platform, governance framework, and standardized processes in place, integrating financial operations will be a swift, sure process. A successful integration inspired the CFO and global finance team to consider other areas for transformation. From evolving multiple layers of the target operating model within Finance, to jump-starting transformation across other functional areas, a powerful ripple effect began and continues across the enterprise. Having the right tools and processes to support a grander vision driven by meaningful insights will continue to empower positive change.

Before

Poor visibility threatened business objectives.

Acquiring a large organic food and beverage business helped a global CPG company expand its operations and nearly double its revenue in the U.S. However, as with most mergers, the integration posed some challenges. Two disparate IT environments with different accounting and reporting models, separate enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, and multiple business intelligence (BI) tools required extensive manual intervention and offline data manipulation, preventing uniform reporting and analysis. Data was trapped in silos. Visibility was insufficient. A new CFO and the finance and accounting teams lacked the insight to support effective forecasting and both strategic and tactical decision-making. In a sector as competitive and fast-changing as food products, this company needed to increase visibility quickly.

After

Unified financial operations support global success.

While this CPG company’s business is spread across two continents (and originates from a number of acquired companies), its financial operations are now centralized and unified. A cloud-based platform extracts and loads data from numerous global sources, then configures and stores it in a central location. Accounting staff across multiple back offices work within a single governance structure and with a single set of streamlined processes, enabling effective reporting and supporting a swift, accurate close. Across the enterprise, visibility is excellent, and insights are at the ready, because analysts can perform real-time calculations and drill down swiftly to the meaning behind the numbers. Unified financial operations helps this $48 billion player predict accurately, plan effectively, and act swiftly—all crucial in a sector where windows of opportunity close as suddenly as they open.

Future

A strong foundation that can keep pace with continued growth.

There will be more acquisition targets in the company’s future. And with a cloud-based platform, governance framework, and standardized processes in place, integrating financial operations will be a swift, sure process. A successful integration inspired the CFO and global finance team to consider other areas for transformation. From evolving multiple layers of the target operating model within Finance, to jump-starting transformation across other functional areas, a powerful ripple effect began and continues across the enterprise. Having the right tools and processes to support a grander vision driven by meaningful insights will continue to empower positive change.

Client transformation journey

  • Before

    Poor visibility threatened business objectives.

    Acquiring a large organic food and beverage business helped a global CPG company expand its operations and nearly double its revenue in the U.S. However, as with most mergers, the integration posed some challenges. Two disparate IT environments with different accounting and reporting models, separate enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, and multiple business intelligence (BI) tools required extensive manual intervention and offline data manipulation, preventing uniform reporting and analysis. Data was trapped in silos. Visibility was insufficient. A new CFO and the finance and accounting teams lacked the insight to support effective forecasting and both strategic and tactical decision-making. In a sector as competitive and fast-changing as food products, this company needed to increase visibility quickly.The preconfigured assets and technology accelerators delivered by KPMG Powered Enterprise let ambitious leadership teams take advantage of embedded leading practices to speed up the decision-making process while instilling confidence.

  • After

    Unified financial operations support global success.

    While this CPG company’s business is spread across two continents (and originates from a number of acquired companies), its financial operations are now centralized and unified. A cloud-based platform extracts and loads data from numerous global sources, then configures and stores it in a central location. Accounting staff across multiple back offices work within a single governance structure and with a single set of streamlined processes, enabling effective reporting and supporting a swift, accurate close. Across the enterprise, visibility is excellent, and insights are at the ready, because analysts can perform real-time calculations and drill down swiftly to the meaning behind the numbers. Unified financial operations helps this $48 billion player predict accurately, plan effectively, and act swiftly—all crucial in a sector where windows of opportunity close as suddenly as they open.

  • Future

    A strong foundation that can keep pace with continued growth.

    There will be more acquisition targets in the company’s future. And with a cloud-based platform, governance framework, and standardized processes in place, integrating financial operations will be a swift, sure process. A successful integration inspired the CFO and global finance team to consider other areas for transformation. From evolving multiple layers of the target operating model within Finance, to jump-starting transformation across other functional areas, a powerful ripple effect began and continues across the enterprise. Having the right tools and processes to support a grander vision driven by meaningful insights will continue to empower positive change.

Our work made a meaningful impact because it was used in real time by the client. We developed an end-to-end strategy for business partner selection that goes from identifying the client’s desired qualities to operationalizing the onboarding process through a scoring model and templates. The strategy’s effectiveness enabled the company to rapidly begin conducting business through its expanded indirect channel.

Alex Tolmasoff

Director, KPMG LLP Customer Advisory

KPMG helped create a nimble and effective sales organization, primed for growth

An independent company must have its own sales and distribution network, legal and compliance departments, procurement processes, order-to-fulfillment systems, and more. KPMG helped the client determine in which countries it made the most sense to do business, identified and vetted appropriate business partners in different markets, communicated with internal stakeholders, established and documented processes, and created templates and work plans to ensure the new company would be ready for operations on “Day 1.” 

1. Assessment phase

Evaluating the “as-is” and target structures

KPMG began by examining the current state of the proposed company—the countries it sold in, its sales channel strategy, sales process, and lead-to-cash processes. The initial assessment highlighted areas of opportunity for the new company and informed the target-state design. To be successful, the company needed a go-to-market strategy that prioritized profitable and high-growth countries, and it demanded the ability to function smoothly without shared services from the parent organization. 

KPMG performed a granular analysis of the business in each country, assessing route-to-market, systems in service, growth potential, and cost of maintaining business. KPMG then assisted in developing the company’s go-to-market strategy, its partner strategy and program design, operating model design, and lead-to-cash documentation and design. 

2. Go-to-market and channel strategy phase

Identifying the most promising opportunities

Challenges included deciding in which countries—of the 202 in which they operated—the new company should retain business, determining the route-to-market (direct, indirect, etc.) for the 145 countries that made the cut, and creating a communication and change management strategy for the more-than-50 “exit countries” and the more-than-30 countries that would shift from direct to indirect operations. 

To determine the answers, KPMG conducted a detailed analysis of each country’s contribution to equipment and service revenue, the number of units in service, whether they sold directly or indirectly, and the aggregate growth potential of the country. 

At its conclusion, the study recommended that the new company continue to serve 145 countries and exit 57. Further, it suggested that only 16 countries be supported directly, with independent companies providing distribution, sales, and service support in the others. Both these changes would increase the potential for greater profitability while lowering operating costs—especially the reduction in direct salesforce in countries with low growth potential.

KPMG created a communication and change management strategy for the “exit countries” and those that would shift from direct to indirect operations to support the client’s merger and acquisition team in managing a successful transition. 

3. Business partner selection phase

Finding the right business partners

The company’s expanded network of independent business partners would be critical to its success. While the company planned to serve 16 countries directly, finding the right business partners to handle sales and service support in the other 145 countries was essential.

After a detailed assessment of business partner requirements, the landscape of potential partners, and regulatory requirements by country, KPMG created and implemented a wide-ranging strategy to identify, vet, and onboard new business partners in over 70 countries. The support included an initial list of potential partners for high-priority countries, a scoring rubric to assess potential partners, and various business partner selection templates to help the company perform its due diligence on each new partner. In partnership with KPMG, the new company was able to identify, select, and onboard multiple business partners in less than one year from conducting the initial route-to-market assessment.

4. Lead-to-cash phase

Ensuring the ability to transact

As the new company sought to separate from its parent, it needed to ensure it could transact on “Day 1” via a lead-to-cash process that operated on its own enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management instances. The lead-to-cash process was distinct across seven legal entities, and KPMG met with process owners for each legal entity to document their current process, technology, and pain points.

KPMG utilized the current-state process flows and pain points to design more consistent lead-to-cash processes that accounted for the region-specific nuances of each legal entity. The technical implementation team then leveraged the future-state lead-to-cash process flows as business process requirements for the net new instances of SAP S/4HANA and Salesforce.com that the new company uses today.

5. Sales operating model phase

Streamlining operations for efficiency and effectiveness

KPMG established the operating model for all the company’s support functions, including a sales operations operating model at the global, regional, and country levels. The sales operations operating model detailed activities critical to the new company’s operations and mapped them to where they would be performed most effectively geographically—globally for activities common across business units and geographies, and locally for nuanced activities most effectively executed within countries.

The new company leveraged the future sales operations operating model as the baseline for its current operating model, and it helped the new company establish global Centers of Excellence that improve the service provided by sales operations more cost-effectively.

KPMG Customer Advisory

Whether transforming a sales organization, developing lead-to-cash systems, or designing go-to-market strategies, KPMG Customer Advisory teams bring the right skills and people to the many challenges facing business today.

Our team of Customer Advisory specialists can help you understand what your customers need—and transform the way your organization delivers value. Combining business experience with functional acumen, we provide you with deep economic analysis, robust customer insights and market intelligence, and strategic business direction to help you generate return on investment (ROI) from your investments in customer-centricity.

Finance Transformation

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