Valley Companies Works with CLA to Build Digital Transformation Roadmap

Project background

Valley Companies, a long-term CLA tax, audit, and wealth advisory client, is a 90-year-old supply chain solutions provider grappling with manual processes and disparate data sources leading to operational inefficiencies in their final mile network. Despite good growth in recent years, Valley Companies wants to adopt technology to enhance its already successful final mile network processes.

In 2024, Valley Companies connected with CLA digital, initiating a thorough investigation of the current final mile network to identify areas for streamlining and automation. Together, Valley and CLA digital identified key improvement areas:

• Enhancing the pricing process for both new opportunities and ongoing relationships.
• Improving the final mile network efficiency and visibility across multiple locations and shipment modes.
• Increasing data connectivity between Valley’s core systems to facilitate more efficient business reporting, easier data access, and reduced manual intervention.

How we got started

CLA digital worked with Valley Companies to scope out a Digital Readiness Assessment and determine which parts of the business to target. Once the Digital Readiness Assessment was scoped, it was time analyze the final mile network.

Current state

CLA digital conducted interviews with over 12 Valley team members from various departments, including finance, operations, marketing, and IT, to understand their interactions with the final mile network.

After completing these interviews, CLA digital team mapped out the workflows of each department. This thorough mapping process allowed CLA to gain insights into how team members are interconnected and what key systems are accessed and shared throughout the final mile network.

With this comprehensive understanding, CLA presented recurring themes identified during the interviews. This helped both CLA and Valley determine digital transformation opportunities.

Use case and feasibility

Upon completing the current state analysis, CLA digital identified over 15 use cases to drive automation at Valley. Together, the teams ranked these use cases based on their return on investment and feasibility of implementing new technology given Valley's existing systems.

These use cases ranged from:

• Developing a robust cloud architecture,
• Determining which processes would benefit most from adopting large language models,
• Digitizing the final mile pricing process,
• Enhancing cybersecurity measures, and
• Improving business reporting/labor analysis capabilities.

Future state and strategic roadmap

Once Valley and CLA aligned on the current state, use cases, and feasibility matrix, next was bundling these use cases into logical implementation phases. CLA digital presented Valley with a strategic roadmap detailing the timeline and cost for each phase:

• Phase 1: Data architecture modernization
• Phase 2: Dimensional modeling for reporting
• Phase 3: Digitization of final mile pricing
• Phase 4: Large language model build-out
• Phase 5: Predictive analytics for labor demand
• Phase 6: Cybersecurity

What's next?

With the completion of the Digital Readiness Assessment, Valley and CLA will continue working together to determine when to implement the new technologies. They will evaluate which technologies make the most business sense and decide the responsibilities between CLA digital and Valley's IT team for implementation.

Interested in a Digital Readiness Assessment for your business?

At CLA, many clients come to us with the simple question, "How do we get started on our digital journey?" CLA digital offers a digital readiness assessment, a 4–8-week engagement allowing our team to meet with your key executives and map out your current state, including the software your team uses and where manual processes exist today.

From there, our digital assessment team develops a future state roadmap, identifying areas where technology can enhance your organization's efficiency and planning for future improvements. The deliverable includes a digital roadmap with a target implementation plan, typically covering 12-18 months. This roadmap helps guide our clients on where to begin and what to expect in the future.