Mary-Louise Hoffman
Arlington, Virginia-based Sehlke Consulting has created a four-pillar approach meant to help federal customers transform their financial management systems and achieve auditability.
This approach forms the basis of the professional services contractor’s Financial and Feeder System Optimization Methodology that covers Leadership and Governance; Stakeholder and User Readiness; Internal Controls and Audit Readiness; and System Implementation and Optimization.
Sehlke derived its FFSO Methodology from multiple government support efforts that include work with the Department of the Navy to help the DON Budget Submitting Offices adopt a modern accounting financial platform and enterprise resource planning tools.
The first phase of the FFSO Methodology involves Leadership and Governance, and Sehlke said senior leadership teams should work toward ensuring workforce commitment and cooperation to implement financial transformation programs across the organization.
Sehlke noted that the second phase, which covers Stakeholder and User Readiness, involves an organizational assessment to determine the readiness level of employees who will support optimization efforts and to identify specific needs that can be addressed through customized change management strategies and role-based end user training.
A key step under the Internal Controls and Audit Readiness phase is to explore holistic approaches to address an organization’s financial management and technological challenges that affect auditability and internal control goals, according to the company.
The final phase for System Implementation and Optimization calls for organizations to assess the maturity of their financial and feeder systems and use data from the assessment to develop corrective action plans that can address organizational goals.
