Hood River Consulting

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Financial Systems Analyst of XS Global

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

XS Global is an international, independent underwriting and insurance management platform (MGU). It operates under a unique hybrid model in the market: not only do we manage and underwrite multiple lines of business globally, but we also assume risk directly through our own reinsurance vehicles, ensuring full alignment of interests with our business partners. Our structure combines strong international financial backing with deep local expertise, operating through strategic hubs across Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, with key offices in Miami, London, Dubai, and Hong Kong, among others.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Hood River Consulting to accomplish?

• Standardize and strengthen NetSuite OneWorld financial operations across XS Global entities, improving consolidated reporting, reconciliations, cash-flow visibility, and period-close controls.
• Expanded and optimized the use of NetSuite’s operational modules, improving the accuracy and completeness of accounting records.
• Automate complex intercompany processes and rules-based expense allocation across subsidiaries and lines of business for invoices, vendor bills, journals, credits, and subsequent adjustments.
• Deliver the Mexico localization workstream, including tax and withholding configuration, VAT transfer accounting, electronic-document readiness, statutory reports, and SAT-oriented XML mappings.
• Improve scalability, planning, security, and administrative control through Multi-Book Accounting, NSPB support, roles and permissions, approval workflows, dashboards, and master-data automation.

SOLUTION

How did you find Hood River Consulting?

Online Search

Why did you select Hood River Consulting over others?

• Good value for cost
• Other

How many teammates from Hood River Consulting were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

1. Optimization of Key Financial Processes- Optimized key financial processes, enabling reconciliations and accounts payable management to be handled directly within the system, with improved reporting and control over outstanding balances. This also established a consistent monthly financial close process, strengthening operational control and improving the efficiency and reliability of financial operations.
2. Strengthened Internal Controls - Implemented proper segregation of duties through roles and workflows aligned with company policies, strengthening internal controls and compliance.
3. Automated Expense Allocation - Successfully implemented an automated, rules-based expense allocation process across subsidiaries and lines of business. This implementation improved the consistency, timeliness, and traceability of expense distribution, while reducing manual effort and simplifying subsequent changes and adjustments.
4. Process Automation Across Subsidiaries - Automated processes that previously required three or more people to complete the same registration across multiple subsidiaries, each with entity-specific rules. The new solution enables a single user to process transactions in parallel across subsidiaries, standardizing the registration process, reducing processing times, and minimizing errors and omissions.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Rules-based expense allocation automates the distribution of expenses across subsidiaries and lines of business for vendor bills, invoices, journals, and credit transactions. This reduces manual calculations, improves consistency, and provides greater traceability of intercompany allocations.

Mexico localization strengthens regulatory compliance by standardizing tax & withholding configurations, VAT reclassification processes, electronic-document requirements, and statutory financial reporting. This improves the accuracy and reliability of the financial information produced in NetSuite.

Multi-Book Accounting, financial report enhancements, and reconciliation improvements provide XS Global with full visibility across subsidiaries, currencies, and accounting requirements. This supports reliable consolidated reporting, faster period-end reviews, and stronger financial decision-making.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

The experience with Hood River Consulting was characterized by highly specialized, hands-on support with a strong focus on results. The team not only understood the operational challenges but also proposed practical solutions aligned with the business needs. Additionally, their clear and responsive communication, particularly when addressing urgent requests or tight deadlines, was instrumental in maintaining operational continuity and resolving critical situations in a timely manner. The team’s availability and continuous support throughout the process also facilitated the adoption of best practices, driving greater automation, control, and standardization across key processes.

What was your primary form of communication with Hood River Consulting?

Virtual Meeting

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Hood River Consulting delivered strong value by improving the efficiency, accuracy, and control of our financial processes, with clear, measurable, and reliable results in our day-to-day operations.

Are there any areas for improvement or something Hood River Consulting could have done differently?

The main area for improvement would be further refining certain consolidated financial reports, particularly balance sheet reporting, where foreign exchange differences across subsidiaries created some remaining variances.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the PMO lead of Trafilea Group, an e-commerce branding firm that helps companies break into the US e-commerce market.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Hood River Consulting?

We were looking to detach our company from older systems, so we needed someone to provide us with custom software development.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Hood River Consulting is providing us with Oracle NetSuite integration to upgrade and modernize our system, particularly for order management and accounting.

Their work would enables us to streamline our order process, logistics, and accountancy needs, and we’re also working with them for Shopify integration.

What is the team composition?

Our main points of contact are Diego (Director & Co-Founder), Federico (NetSuite Software Architect), Henry (Oracle NetSuite ERP Functional Consultant), and Rafael (Oracle NetSuite Technical Consultant).

How did you come to work with Hood River Consulting?

I wasn’t initially involved in the process, but I believe our affiliate team came across Hood River Consulting while doing some research.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing partnership started in September 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

The system that Hood River Consulting developed has already helped us garner excellent results. It’s efficient and it has improved our overall operations, so I’m 100% satisfied with their continued support.

How did Hood River Consulting perform from a project management standpoint?

They perform well from a project management perspective, as they consistently adhere to our timelines and deliverables. The Hood River team is very accommodating and they always have the right answers to tone things down.

Our stakeholders are quite hard to manage and they would always try to go one step ahead of the development. But with Hood River Consulting, they’ve had the best of moods and there have not been any quarrels.

We’re heavy Slack users so we mainly use Slack to communicate, but we also utilize email. Apart from that, we use Asana as our main project management tool to keep track of our tasks and milestones.

What did you find most impressive about them?

What gives Hood River Consulting a competitive advantage over their competitors is their technical development expertise.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It would be better if they could improve their development capacity, although I believe they’re in the process of growing their company.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I advise you to take advantage of their technical capabilities and don’t hesitate to reach out for any problems.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the President and Owner of (a/an) Information technology

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Software Consulting, Implementations, and Optimizations.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Hood River Consulting to accomplish?

• Receive reliable and professional software consulting and development services.

SOLUTION

How did you find Hood River Consulting?

Referral

Why did you select Hood River Consulting over others?

Close to my geographic location, Pricing first our budget, Great culture fit, Good value for cost, Referred to me, Company values aligned

What was the size of Hood River Consulting’s team?

2-5 Employees

What was your primary form of communication with Hood River Consulting?

Virtual Meeting, Email or Messaging App

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Our project was a joint venture to engage in several NetSuite ERP Implementation and Optimization related projects. Key deliverables included assessment of current state of ERP modules and customizations and providing key solutions and advisory services for system optimization.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• Measurable increase in user efficiency in day to day operations.
• Gained valuable insights into modules that were not being properly leveraged in NetSuite ERP

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Project management at HRC is very on top of things. They are thorough, professional, and always make me feel like all of our bases are being covered. They do a good job really listening to client needs and translating that into powerful solutions.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

They are agile and have a diverse team of experienced consultants on both the functional and technical side of things.I am impressed by their ability to answer complex questions and provide outside-the-box solutions when required. Additionally, they try their best not to over customize the system and leverage as much native functionality as possible.

Are there any areas for improvement or something {provider_name} could have done differently?

I think that they could improve in helping to identify key stakeholders on their side. They can have several resources working on a project and at times it wasn't clear who was the main point of contact. This certainly improved as time went on and we communicated more openly.