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KPMG in Canada joins forces with Bell to drive finance transformation

Dan Krausz on how KPMG is one of Bell’s strategic advisors on its finance transformation journey, operating as an integrated team to realize value

As Partner and Telecommunications Sector

Lead at KPMG in Canada, Dan Krausz has played a key role on Bell’s finance transformation journey over the past few years.

Rapid technology innovation in telecommunications

To be successful in the face of huge industry transformation, Krausz explains that one thing is vital: “Telecommunication organizations need access to more data, more frequently, that is well governed. Data is at the core of what finance does, so being able to make informed decisions, fast, is something that finance needs to drive.”

Business-led and technology-enabled finance transformation

By working with Bell on their finance transformation project from the beginning, KPMG has helped shape the related vision and strategy.

“We started out by helping Bell determine what they wanted to achieve and then translated that into a practical roadmap for implementation,” explains Krausz.

An integral aspect of KPMG’s involvement in the transformation is the combined approach of delivering technology outcomes while bringing a business lens to the table, taking a use case approach.

He adds: “There have been several workstreams that we have been involved in. One that I’m most proud of is intelligent forecasting – we were able to develop AI models which use both internal and external data sources to produce forecasts. These not only improved forecast accuracy, but they also continue to learn and become more accurate over time, and drive efficiency into a process which was previously manual in nature. Another use case was for analytical process automation – significantly reducing the number of manual journal entries as part of the financial close process. This also provided additional granularity from a management reporting perspective given the details were maintained in the data warehouse.”

“A common theme throughout this project with Bell has been our collaboration, working shoulder to shoulder to not only deliver transformation outcomes, but to support the enhancement of Bell’s capabilities, helping to ensure that the teams are well equipped to leverage new technologies,” concludes Krausz.

Matthew MacEwen

TITLE: VICE PRESIDENT OF FINANCE TRANSFORMATION

INDUSTRY: FINANCE

LOCATION: CANADA

Matthew MacEwen is the Vice President of Finance, Customer Experience and Corporate Planning, Transformation and Finance Analytics at Bell Canada. In addition to supporting various Business Units in achieving their strategic, operational and financial objectives, Matthew is responsible for executing Bell Canada’s digital transformation for the Finance function. This includes advancing the function’s capabilities with the development and some of their finance operation’s business, including business units from a more financial planning and analysis (FP&A) perspective.

The emerging technologies in question –and central to Bell Finance’s transformation – are, of course, artificial intelligence (AI), the application of machine learning (ML) and predictive analytics within finance processes. These technologies have the potential to provide many organisational benefits, such as providing useful insights to minimise unpredictability, creating sophisticated forecasting capabilities and automating traditionally time-consuming and inefficient processes.

For a finance department, the fiscal knock-on effects of such technologies are able to free up resources that can have a sweeping effect throughout the entire structure of an organisation. This is exactly what Bell finance has set out to do – and they are already seeing the impact of such systems.

Another aspect of this transformation concerns not only technology and data, but also Bell Finance building new capabilities within the actual function, as well as the critical upskilling of their workforce so