The Challenge:
A specialty materials manufacturer producing engineered powders and waxes was managing a difficult ERP implementation at the same time it announced the relocation of its headquarters and finance operations from the New York metro area to the Southeast.
The timing compounded an already difficult transition. Several long-tenured finance team members, including the controller, chose retirement over relocating. The Accounting Manager position sat vacant in the middle of the disruption. Monthly close and plant costing still had to run without interruption, and the new location made replacing that level of experienced talent locally significantly more difficult than it had been in the company’s prior market.
How Liv Data Helped:
Liv Data stepped into the gap directly rather than treating the staffing shortage and the ERP transition as separate problems to be solved sequentially.
Immediate Continuity
- Assumed the Accounting Manager role within the new ERP environment, taking direct ownership of monthly close and plant costing so neither process was interrupted
- Worked through the reporting and process gaps the ERP implementation had left unresolved
Knowledge Documentation
- Built and documented standard operating procedures for the controller, accounts payable, accounts receivable, and purchasing functions
- Converted institutional knowledge that existed only with departing employees into a repeatable, transferable playbook before that knowledge was lost
Staffing Model
- Addressed the talent shortage in the new location with a blended model combining technology, onshore resources, and offshore capacity under Liv Data management, rather than attempting to rebuild a full local finance team in a constrained labor market
- Executed the transition in three phases: onboarding and continuity, in which the open role was absorbed and procedures documented without disrupting operations; parallel run and absorption, in which each departing employee’s responsibilities were taken on individually as retirements occurred; and transition back, in which the documented, fully operational function was handed to the permanent team with a clean knowledge transfer rather than an ongoing dependency on Liv Data
The Outcome:
- Books closed on schedule and plant costing ran without a gap throughout the ERP implementation, the relocation, and the wave of retirements
- The business emerged with a fully documented finance function it did not have before the engagement began
- The staffing model in place is no longer constrained by the local labor market at the new headquarters location
- The transition was managed without an open-ended dependency on outside support, concluding with a full handback to a permanent internal team
Why It Worked:
Treating the staffing gap, the ERP transition, and the knowledge loss as one connected problem — rather than three separate issues — allowed Liv Data to stabilize operations immediately while building the documentation and staffing model that let the function run independently once the transition was complete.
