Notes

02-26-2019

GGB – US Project Plan
Consulting Fees

Sponsor: Nick Dagenais
Team: Adam Nyberg, Jen Alicz, Vanya, TBD
Resources: Outside Consulting (HR)
Stakeholders: Regional Branches, Directors, Finance Managers, FP&A Team, Analysts
Objective: Analyze the outside consulting expense line for each region. Aggregate the consulting fees
into buckets such as internal and external fees. Provide information as to the nature of the fees and
whether or not the expenses are necessary. Identify possible opportunities to leverage internal
resources as opposed to outside consultants in order to reduce our consulting spend.
Current State: Managers and regional finance teams do not have clear visibility into the amount of
consulting expenditure hitting their P&L’s. This makes it difficult to determine whether or not these
consulting fees are in line with expected spend, or whether the expenses are necessary. Are there
divisional/regional consulting expenditure guidelines, and if not is there an opportunity to create
standardized guidelines across regions.
Scope: The project will only focus on the GGB – US outside consulting expense. The estimated time
period will be for the current year combined with historical data. This will help determine which
branches/regions are spending on outside consulting services, and it will shed light on what the expense
trend has looked like over time.
Identified Major Concerns:
 Consulting expenses are not regularly monitored and rolled up at a regional/divisional level
 There are various consulting fees hitting the P&L without much insight as to what they are for.
 There does not appear to be a disciplined approach across regions regarding outside consulting
spend. Is there a need for structure surrounding this expense bucket?
Proposed Project Steps:
1. Pull together all the relevant GL, café, and invoice detail for the outside consulting line of the
P&L. Break the expense out by region and possibly by branch.
2. Research each expense and determine the nature of each one. Reach out to regional financial
analysts and possibly CFO’s for additional information on specific vendors if necessary.
3. Create regional summaries that can be sent to each regions finance team on a quarterly basis
for review.
4. Analyze expense data and determine how much we are spending by region/branch on outside
consulting fees.

5. Identify the departments with high consulting expenses and connect with them to determine
the reason for the high expense. Identify whether or not there is opportunity for expense
savings within those particular departments.
6. Meet with the team and discuss the results
7. Finalize a recommendation for outside consulting expense
8. Present findings to managers
9. Meet with the team to discuss feedback from regional analysts

Becoming a Corporate Intern with AJG will give myself my first opportunity to experience accounting in a "real world" setting. AJG has designed their Corporate Intern position within their Accounting department to give myself a variety of experiences to learn from within a small amount of time. This will give myself the most exposure in the least time possible of many areas insurance accounting has to offer myself in a "managerial accounting" setting.