Leveraging the GPO

in a multi-erp

organisation

Tom Dunlop – Head of Finance

Transformation

Sharedserviceslink Conference

Agenda

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Who we are and what we do

Finance structure

The GPO activities

Lessons learnt and conclusion

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Who we are and what we

do

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Our Global Network and Capabilities

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100+countries

Global MarketLeader in TIC

1,000+laboratoriesand offices

100,000audits

Global Market

Leader inAssurance

3,000auditors

Global ATIC Business with over 43,000 Employees

more than 100 countries, with 1,000 locations

& 43,000 employees, delivering total quality solutions

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DEPTH AND BREADTH OF SERVICES GLOCALLY

OUR SERVICESOUR SECTORS

Resources

Trade

Products

CertificationInspection

TestingAssurance

For more than 130 years, companies around the world have depended on Intertek to help ensure the quality and safety of their products, processes and systems.

Relatively acquisitive business

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LSI

£250m+ added in annual revenues from acquisitions since 2015

Finance structure

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Finance FOOTPRINT

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BPO covers 5

countries

BPO –PTP & OTC

BPO – Delhi outsourced

Matrix mgmt

Finance in each country

SSC – a cluster of countries

Finance system landscape

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Federated structure, historically divisional

Multiple ERPs and billing systems

PeopleSoft – Group supportedMoody Sun – divisional supported

Rest - country

Current environment

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The Group is on a working capital improvement drive

• There is no budget for large ERP migration (plus wary of big ticket items)

• There is no budget for robotics

• Travel budgets minimised

But am I disheartened…? No

There is plenty to be done despite this.

"Small deeds done are better than great deeds planned"

The GPO activities

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Finance Transformation

Shared Service Centre

Country

Finance

The team structure

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Tom Dunlop

Head of Finance Transformation

UK

Rob Dickens Ian Bragger Rose Nicastro Steve Jarnagin

Record to Report GPO Order to Cash GPO Procure to Pay GPO Global Master Data Manager

South Africa UK USA USA

OperationsPeopleSoft support (IT)

Following a recent restructuring, the Transformation team now reports into the Group CFO.

What should the gpos be driving?

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A standard global process will help deliver on all of these.

Granted, there may need to be local exceptions, but minimal (?)

This approach ensures GPOs do not see the process as “be all and end all”

GPO qualities (with thanks to Consider Solutions): thought process, business experience, social skills, leadership, driving results and problem solving

Efficiency Performance ComplianceBusiness

Value

What should the gpos be driving?

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PeopleSoft upgrade

Master data

Controls adherence

Eliminate inefficiency and drive opportunity

Demo art of the possible

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PeopleSoft - THE HYPE CYCLE

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2011 – BIRTH OF THE GLOBAL PROCESS OWNER ROLE

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2011

Technology Trigger Outsourced SSC initiativePeopleSoft Deployment

ExpectationsCFO: Set a strong tone from the topIncrease SSC & PeopleSoft adoptionProvide clarity to Intertek and SSC

Mixed RoleProcess Ownership (30%)Day Job: ERP Scope

2012 – Pause and regroup

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2011

Countries felt SSC done to them

More change mgt. and selling of the benefit should have happened

Successful Chart of Account overhaul

2012

GPO Empowerment IMPROVES

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2011

Offline Processes FormalizedAutomated Workflow to come later

Moved from Line Manager control to GPOs empowered to make changes and enable IT resource.

Addressed credibility gap. Forced GPOs to engage with and address key pain points

20142012

New Technology enables greater impact

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PeopleSoft upgrade

• Purchase approval workflow (PO and non PO)

• Collections workbench functionality

• General ledger journal approvals

• Dashboards and workcentres

GPO team could revisit the processes using system functionality

Vendor Master Data team created (Customer Master team existed)

Countries and Transformation team met in India for 2 weeks to ensure clarity

2011 2012 2014 2015

A constant battle

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2011 2012 2014 2015

Countries returning to type:Local changes to process“but this one is special”Urgent payment

New rule: No change to process unless reviewed and approved by GPO, country and SSC (fairly basic I know, but…)

Resource limitations:Dependent on IT budget for system amends Finance system resources are absorbed by statutory changes (eg GCC VAT, India GST )

2017Recent user survey more complimentary than expecting:• Training – intranet site for all• Who is my country contact

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Positioned ourselves to undertake what appear to be discrete projects, but which met at least one of the following criteria:

• Master data foundation layer improvements

• Improve the control environment

• Address targeted areas of inefficiency and opportunity

• Demonstrate the art of the possible

So no BIG ERP or robotics

Investments, so Marginal gains…

What should the gpos be driving?

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PeopleSoft upgrade

Master data

Controls adherence

Eliminate inefficiency and drive opportunity

Demo art of the possible

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Master data foundation layer improvement – KEY to driving value

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Standard Chart of Accounts defined and implemented in PeopleSoft:

• Standard intercompany coding structure

• Trial balance reduced to 335 natural accounts (down from 1,500)

• Analysis dimensions for more insightful analytics

Centralising global PeopleSoft Vendor Master Data:

• Minimum data standards

• Separate verification of supplier changes, especially bank details

• Centralised in the BPO SSC

• Challenge of verifying supplier bank changes

Vendor data enrichment

• Apex Analytix scrubbed master data and enhanced legal names, addresses and SIC codes

• Combined with duplicate payments review allowing monetary recovery

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Vendor data enrichment

35,192 UNIQUE VENDOR IDS

862 Duplicate Vendors

1227 Inactive Vendors

682 Invalid Tax IDs/VAT Registration Numbers

5760 Invalid IBAN or SWIFT Numbers

RESULTS

15,000 Street Addresses Corrected

2063 Phone Numbers Added

10,493 Email Addresses Added

>6000 SIC & NAICS Codes

What should the gpos be driving?

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PeopleSoft upgrade

Master data

Controls adherence

Eliminate inefficiency and drive opportunity

Demo art of the possible

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Improve the control environment and accountability

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Global credit note statistics

• Quality of billing assessed

• Every country submits monthly invoice and c/nnumbers

• Follow up where high (over time and across countries)

• Root cause analysis where continued issues

Conscience of the business

• Queues (awaiting approval, match exceptions)

• Receivable balances v credit limits

• Sales invoices that failed to load to AR

Balance sheet reconciliation process

• No central visibility of expected reconciliations

• Introduced monthly reconciliation process

• Excel driven, macro based consolidation

• Evidence capture sampling to sharepoint

What should the gpos be driving?

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PeopleSoft upgrade

Master data

Controls adherence

Eliminate inefficiency and drive opportunity

Demo art of the possible

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Targeted areas of inefficiency

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Key customer revenues

• Manual data collection effort country by country

• Driven central data collection – 4 teams provide 68% of the data

• Macro driven collation and dissection of the manual data (excel) saved weeks of work

Coprocess tool

• Introduced a “netting” tool called Coprocess.

• Post month end loading of ledgers, with Coprocess categorisation into Matching, Missing, Mismatching.

• Provided significant benefit but not solved upfront problem

ICTMS internal intercompany tool

• Upfront loading of invoice to a dedicated, structured intranet site

• Change management with Billers, but kept very simple

• Simple workflow of accept and decline

Intercompany invoicing within the diverse ERP and billing landscape

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Intercompany TOOLS

A simple form for the billers

And a control centre for the intercompany accountants• Disputed items – invoices your company raised that have been disputed by counterparty; dispute needs resolving and entry resubmitting

What should the gpos be driving?

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PeopleSoft upgrade

Master data

Controls adherence

Eliminate inefficiency and drive opportunity

Demo art of the possible

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Demonstrate the art of the possible

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Robotics

• Currently no plans for a COE

• Plan to use the intercompany improvement to introduce robotics

• Simple level to start – do the reconciliation between Coprocess and ICTMS – to prove concept

Dynamic customer hierarchies

• Customer groups change and our internal mapping out of date

• External bodies such as Bureau van Dijk permit dynamic updating of those mappings

• Risk based receivables info powerful – customer, country, industry etc

ERP future

• What meets our needs? (PeopleSoft support to 2024)

• What modules / add onsshould we use?

• OCR / supplier portal – who?

• Collections

Lessons learnt and

conclusions

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Challenges and lessons learnt

1. We all know tone from the top is vital – we stalled out in 2012 even when the individual who gave that tone was still in the business as he agreed to stall

2. As an organisation, we were not mature enough; everyone still wanted to do their way

3. Resulted in us focusing on process and smaller areas of inefficiency, rather than the larger change management

4. No surprise that those areas where we could “get on and do it anyway” were more successful because less stakeholders having to change; eg vendor master data enrichment

5. Push the GPOs out of their comfort zones – some still too narrow focused on their towers, rather than true end to end process experts

6. Don’t assume the finance teams will understand and buy in to the changes just because it is finance related; still need to “sell” to them

7. Communication – we trained the finance teams for the PeopleSoft upgrade and they were to face the business and train them; that happened with varying degrees of consistency. I would prefer larger central team to enable direct operations contact (and hear their pain points better)

8. Need persistence and resilience

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The future of the gpo role

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• Our reality:

Wary of big ticket projects so focused on marginal gains rather strategic objectives

• GPOs diving into the day to day detail has its benefits

– Helps formulate ‘the bigger picture’ answers

– Ensures process understanding

– Drives better decisions (eg pain around supplier onboarding drives the case for supplier

portal, with a raft of strategic benefits to the organisation)

– Increases credibility.

The future of the gpo role

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1. Sell the standard process vision better

2. GPOs accountable for SSC & country service delivery

o Drive more value from the standard process and outsourced SSC (greatest

knowledge)

o Stopped the call for repatriation which is a huge success

o Countries cite cost when try to fold in additional services, which need to

overcome

3. Upskill the GPOs (is Lean and Six Sigma needed?)

4. Keep asking “why, why, why” on same areas and new areas

5. Balancing detailed engagement and independent oversight

6. The art of the possible

Peter Marshall, Chaplain of the US Senate, 1902 to 1949

"Small deeds done are better than great deeds planned"

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