European banking group operating through multiple legal entities across several jurisdictions, with diversified business lines spanning retail banking, corporate financing, and asset management.

The Finance function faced fragmented consolidation and planning processes: statutory consolidation, budget, and forecast were managed in separate environments, generating inconsistencies between actuals and projections, extended close timelines, and insufficient audit trail documentation.

Before technology selection, the priority was clarifying requirements and structuring a unified financial management framework.

The central challenge for Finance leadership was actual-to-forecast consistency: how to ensure budget and forecast figures align seamlessly with statutory consolidation outputs across dozens of entities?

Without this alignment, variance analysis lost credibility, actuals-to-forecast discrepancies were difficult to explain, and auditors regularly flagged inconsistencies across different reporting outputs.

The objective: build a unified platform enabling:

• Production of statutory consolidation, budget, and forecast on a common data foundation

• Reduced close cycles by eliminating manual reconciliations

• Complete data traceability meeting audit requirements

We began with a process audit revealing the extent of manual reconciliations between consolidation and planning. Working with the Consolidation Director and Head of Management Control, we mapped consistency gaps and defined a common framework.

Our engagement encompassed:

• Redesigning the data model to unify statutory consolidation, budget, and forecast across shared analytical dimensions

• Defining business rules ensuring permanent alignment between actuals and forecasts

• Designing a scalable starter kit progressively deployable across group entities

The platform incorporates automated consistency controls and complete entry traceability, meeting auditor requirements from the first close cycle.