Life Link Enhances Month-End Close with SkyStem’s ART

Donna Carson has been a part of Life Link for nearly a decade, transitioning from senior accountant to her current role as Manager of Financial Planning and Analysis. Life Link, an air medical transport company operating in Minnesota and Wisconsin for 35 years, plays a crucial role in transporting critically ill patients between hospitals and from scenes to medical facilities. As the company expanded from three consortium members to ten, their finance team also grew, prompting a need for enhanced financial controls and streamlined processes.

Challenges

Before adopting SkyStem’s ART, Life Link relied heavily on manual processes using Excel spreadsheets for account reconciliations. As the company and its finance operations scaled, the manual approach became increasingly cumbersome, contributing to a four-day close process.

By automating the reconciliation process, ART not only saved considerable time but also enhanced financial controls by requiring multiple team members to review and approve reconciliations. Moreover, ART’s automation features ensured that inactive accounts were reconciled automatically, reducing manual effort and providing reassurance that all accounts were consistently monitored. This capability proved invaluable during their annual audits, allowing them to focus more on high-risk accounts while ART managed routine reconciliations in the background.

User Experience and Advice

Donna shared insights from her extensive experience with ART, advising other potential adopters to evaluate their chart of accounts by risk level. By prioritizing high-risk accounts for closer scrutiny and automation, finance teams can leverage ART to its fullest potential. She reiterated that ART’s ability to reconcile accounts automatically, even when inactive, was particularly beneficial, offering a high level of reassurance to her and her team.

Solution

Seeking to improve efficiency and accuracy in financial reporting, Life Link implemented SkyStem’sART approximately five years ago. Before ART, the team used Excel spreadsheets to reconcile their accounts, but with the help of ART, they were able to focus on more material accounts while ART automated the rest of the reconciliations. The transition to ART significantly reduced their close process time to just one or one and a half days, depending on the volume of accounts reconciled.

Implementation and Benefits

Donna Carson noted that the implementation of ART was seamless, despite the smaller size of their team at the time. SkyStem did all the heavy lifting, allowing Life Link to quickly integrate ART into their financial operations without disrupting their day-to-day activities.

Donna Carson, Manager of Financial Planning and Analysis at Life Link, as she talks
about the benefit of using ART in the month-end close process

Takeaways

SkyStem’s ART has become an essential tool in Life Link’s financial toolkit, revolutionizing their approach to account reconciliation and financial reporting. By eliminating manual processes and enhancing controls, ART not only accelerated their financial close but also bolstered their audit efficiency. As Life Link continues to grow and evolve, ART remains a cornerstone in maintaining robust financial operations, ensuring accuracy, efficiency, and compliance.

Life Link’s experience with ART’s key takeaways: