A Healthcare Organization

An inherited system, a new team, and a 30-day close

A private-equity-backed healthcare organization had implemented Certinia Financial Management roughly two years earlier through a different partner. By the time a new CEO and finance leadership team arrived, the configuration no longer matched how the team needed to work, and month-end close routinely stretched toward a month. Sales invoices had to be posted manually in batches of 200 at a time, cash receipts were matched by hand, accounts payable ran through a hodgepodge of an OCR tool and manual review with no consistent approval path, and the finance team leaned heavily on the VP of Technology just to keep integrations between billing, CRM, and Certinia from breaking down at month-end.

An immediate-support bridge, then a full Future State Design

VFP began with two weeks of ad-hoc, office-hours support to stabilize the finance team’s most urgent month-end needs while the organization’s new CFO transition completed. From there, VFP ran a structured current-state review across billing, AR, AP, and month-end close — including sitting in on a live billing run to see workarounds firsthand — and delivered a Future State Design readback with 29+ specific, prioritized recommendations.

Key recommendations included automated invoice posting through Certinia’s Trigger Posting functionality, a consolidated Collections Workspace so finance could own AR reminders and statements directly, Cash Posting Auto Match to eliminate manual cash matching, a single proposed on-platform AP approval workflow, Vendor Payments batch processing with NACHA files and check printing, and a Financial Report Builder for executive reporting. The organization ranked every recommendation in VFP’s Campfire portal using Must Have / Should Have / Nice to Have categories, and the two teams moved into a focused, phased Certinia upgrade — a core release delivered on an accelerated timeline so a newly onboarded controller could learn the system once, on the improved version, rather than twice.

The organization’s challenges were operational as much as technical: new leadership had inherited a system nobody on the current team had configured or been trained on, and the private equity ownership group was watching closely for proof that the Certinia investment would pay off.

VFP staffed the engagement with senior consultants from day one, delivering fast, reliable wins that rebuilt confidence in Certinia. That trust, combined with the depth of insight VFP gained from the health check, opened the door to a proposed longer-term Advisory Services partnership: a value-based case, not an hours-based one, quantifying up to $630K in identified annual value — a projected 2% improvement in AR collections (roughly $475–500K in freed-up cash), eliminating duplicate vendor payments (a minimum of $40–50K in direct savings), and freeing up an estimated 1,400 hours a year for the finance team to reinvest in higher-value work (roughly $105K). The organization approved an initial 25-hour scope against the highest-priority items while the full roadmap went to its private equity ownership for consideration.

This engagement reflects the model VFP aims to bring to every Advisory Services relationship: start with a rigorous, current-state health check, prove value through fast, focused wins, and let the roadmap — and the pace of the partnership — be shaped by what each client is ready for. Not every engagement becomes a multi-year partnership, and that’s fine; the goal is always to leave a finance team with a clearer system, a prioritized path forward, and the confidence to keep moving.