Health Care Leader Increases Reconciliation Quality and Risk Prevention with SkyStem’s Solution
SkyStem LLC, a provider of automated month-end close account reconciliation software, is pleased to announce Lake Health’s success story on increasing reconciliation quality and risk prevention with ART. Since 1902, Lake Health has provided a community health system for patient and family-centered care in Northeast Ohio. As a private, not-for-profit leader in community health care, Lake Health provides its services with the help of 600 physicians, 2,900 health care professionals, and almost 1,000 volunteers at multiple facilities. The not-for-profit is the largest private employer in Lake County, providing comprehensive health care services to residents and neighboring communities with hospitals and health care facilities.
Lake Health’s accounting team was struggling with timeliness and lack of consistent quality during the reconciliation review process each month. Occasionally, the accounting team was also catching accounts that were not being reconciled. Before implementing ART, Lake Health was managing reconciliations of high-risk accounts with a spreadsheet checklist. Ownership was sometimes designated to groups, and not clearly assigned to individuals, which was not ideal.
Specifically, the team was in need of a tool that provided visibility, transparency, efficiency, and automated tracking of reconciliation status each month. The team also desired a solution that could highlight, identify and aid in timely error resolution. This prompted the team to search for automated solutions, ultimately selecting SkyStem’s ART.
Since implementing ART, Lake Health’s auditors have expressed satisfaction with the improvement of internal controls over financial reporting. The accounting team has been able to retrieve documents faster than before for audits and provide accurate data in real-time to auditors using ART’s system reports. The auditors were satisfied with the efficiency of data collection and its quality in comparison to past audits.
“ART should really be considered for companies that are looking for continuous operational improvement. ART can eliminate a lot of the manual spreadsheets, which will allow more visibility. It allows accounting teams to focus more on qualitative work rather than the administrative tasks.”
Since implementation, ART has enabled Lake Health to:
- Lower risk with high-quality reconciliations
- Save time by grouping accounts for reconciliation
- Clear outstanding items on a timely basis
- Achieve greater accessibility for auditors
- Increase visibility within the entire reconciliation process
- Report status in real time
- Attach support to reconciliations electronically
- Instantly access reconciliations and documents
- Communicate responsibilities clearly
- Enforce standardization
- Review faster and more efficiently
- Alert users of upcoming deadlines via email
For more information on Lake Health’s success and benefits from adopting art, read the case study here.
About SkyStem LLC
Headquartered in the heart of New York City, SkyStem delivers a powerful close and account reconciliation application for organizations seeking to streamline their financial processes. The company’s flagship solution, ART, is an enterprise technology that helps CFOs and Controllers shorten the month-end close and the time to issue financials by automating balance sheet reconciliations, managing month-end tasks, performing flux analysis and providing insightful reporting. The web-based solution streamlines and eliminates up to 90% of manual activities while strengthening internal controls and corporate governance.
