Discover’s Accounting Services Fly to the Cloud with MAPS Program

By: Michelle Green, VP, Financial Systems Finance & Amanda Kreutziger, VP Application Development

In February 2020, Discover introduced a new initiative designed to simplify and modernize our financial information systems. The Modernization of Accounting Processes & Systems (“MAPS”) retired seven general ledger (G/L) and reconciliation systems, which are the source systems of record for each financial transaction that takes place within Discover to produce SEC-regulated financial statements and regulatory reports.

Our Discover-led MAPS Program is the result of a 22-month effort that demonstrated our Discover Behaviors with both strong company-wide, cross-functional collaboration and equally strong third-party partnerships with Oracle and Accenture. The “As One” team delivered the MAPS Program on-time, under budget, and in high quality on January 1, 2022. Q1 is the first quarter that we filed our financial statements and regulatory reports from the Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications.

The retiring systems had a good run — 37 years, in fact! The MAPS Program simplified our financial systems and data architectures while improving reporting capabilities, access to data, and in quicker timeframe to make more informed business decisions. The “As One” MAPS team also streamlined our chart of accounts and improved the integrity of our data by meeting the higher enterprise data standard of documenting data lineage for our financial reports. The idea is that Finance will be an even stronger business partner because they are spending less time pulling data from multiple data sources and validating the data because they are leveraging automation and spending more time partnering with the lines of business to make insightful data-driven decisions to grow Discover’s footprint.

Finance Corporate Services also established their first two Product Teams that support the Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) applications. Cloud applications ensure we have the latest functionality and reduce time-consuming and costly enhancement updates. There are regular monthly and quarterly updates that will keep us in a continuous improvement mindset and all of these improvements will better position us for future growth because of the flexibility that cloud applications bring.

For data alone, we have quicker access to financial information for company-wide expense management, which helps us make business decisions on expenses with greater transparency and accountability. We can better support our lines of business with planning projections and analyses for our products and costs. And the increased integrity of our finance data can be used consistently across our company for improved decision-making.

Getting the MAPS Program up and running was no small task. In preparation for bringing the system online and changing the landscape of the financial systems, we:

• Replaced the previous system’s physical on-site servers and equipment and transferred everything to Oracle Cloud EPM. The replacement is significant because it was our first cloud migration, and Oracle Cloud EPM is the application that will be used for Planning & Reporting purposes by our Controllership and Line of Business Finance teams.
• Configured two additional Oracle Fusion Applications and concluded our first three test cycles to confirm what we built works. Being in the Cloud allows us to modernize our technology and always be on the latest version of the application with monthly or quarterly updates. This simplifies our technology architecture and builds the foundation for future flexibility to have the latest functionality.
• Updated 75+ G/L feeds to integrate into the Cloud Data Fabric platform, which is the landing area for our financial data from our lines of business.
• End-to-End Integration Testing Cycles. This was a major accomplishment that was no small feat as Discover has never had an integrated end-to-end testing environment in place for prior technology implementations using production data from our source systems. One of the MAPS Program’s success criteria was ensuring the system was able to produce accurate financial statements and regulatory reports. During the end-to-end integrated testing cycles, the team was able to reproduce April, May, and June SEC financial statements and regulatory reports that reconciled to the penny.
• Updated 24 of our chart of account systems with the new chart of accounts that became available on Jan. 1. This effort involved 24 different managers in Finance, Human Resources, Legal, Corporate Services and Procurement, and included coordination with 14 external third parties that support these systems.

Though the Oracle Fusion Applications and the FCS Product Team structure are still new, the modern functionality and Product Teams are designed and built to grow and adapt with us. We’re eager to realize its ongoing benefits throughout 2022 and beyond.