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Longview Fibre Company
Longview Fibre Paper & Packaging Inc. produces and manufactures the highest quality paper and corrugated fiber products at one of North America's largest papermaking complexes. Located in Longview, Washington, Longview Fibre was founded in 1927 with a mere 300 employees. Since their inception, Longview Fibre has become one of the largest paper manufacturers in the nation, now with seven converting plants scattered across four Western states, as well as one of the largest papermaking plants in North America, with an average daily production capacity of 3200 tons. Longview Fibre was recently purchased by Brookfield Asset Management, who was in the process of reviewing all of the operations of the company. Strategic Solutions NW, in coordination with Price Waterhouse Coopers, was hired to assess the functioning and efficiency of the Finance Department. The assessment focused on designing an efficient and effective finance organization, streamlining the close process, optimizing the chart of accounts and decoupling the financial and management reporting to better manage the business. The results of implementing the opportunities identified in the assessment were as follows. First, SSNW did a restructure of the Financial Department which resulted in a reduction of 6 FTE's. Next, improvements to the system resulted in a reduction of 10 workdays to close and distribute the financial package. SSNW was also responsible for a re-sequence of the chart of accounts to align with financial reporting needs of the company. Lastly, a simplification of the management reporting structure was introduced by establishing 2 main profit centers and 1 cost center for corporate expenses.
In addition to the assessment of the financial sector of Longview Fibre, SSNW also engaged in an evaluation of the IT organization. The results were a set of key initiatives to improve the performance of the IT department, a simplification and standardization of the application architecture, and an overall reduction in the cost of the information systems by more than 20% per year.
The last part of the organization that SSNW focused on improving was the Payroll Department of Longview Fibre. We identified opportunities for streamlining and reducing costs by recommending a third party solution where much of the payroll activities would be outsourced. In conjunction with outsourcing, SSNW did an examination of the best case use of technology and associated costs as well as formulating highest value process, organization and technology changes. |
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