This is our story of collaborating with a leader in mining and manufacturing to co-create a Global Business Services (GBS) model – unifying siloed, disparate finance operations for improved efficiencies and control and reduced risks.

As we know…

The steel industry has been experiencing variable demand, high logistics costs and stringent regulatory measures. For this capital-intensive sector – characterized by long process cycles and management of payments and receivables worth millions of dollars – streamlined, seamless and scalable Finance and Accounting (F&A) systems are indispensable.

Digitalization can integrate finance, facilitating greater visibility and data-driven decision-making for improved workflows, faster turnaround and reduced costs.

The challenge for the client was...

Its acquisition trail in Australia introduced several legacy systems and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platforms, resulting in disparate processes, multiple touchpoints and decentralized operations.

This fragmented environment led to numerous challenges, including missed invoices, duplicate tasks and payments, and inefficient resource utilization. A big concern was the average monthly 15,000+ open invoices. These delays in processing and payments hampered raw material delivery, production volumes and brand credibility.

At a strategic level, the dispersed processes posed significant hurdles to the CFO’s endeavor of improving cash flow and driving real-time visibility into enterprise-wide activities. Furthermore, there were significant gaps in risk management.

The client sought to transform its disparate F&A entities into a unified GBS platform to streamline operations, enhance visibility and control, and reduce costs.

Stepping in as a consulting and co-creation partner…

WNS leveraged its expertise in domain, process excellence, analytics and digital to deploy a highly scalable and cost-effective GBS model for the Procure-to-Pay (P2P) tower. The model was designed to simplify, consolidate and standardize operations while driving continuous improvements. Furthermore, it harnessed advanced analytics to deliver insights for risk management and improved decision-making.

Key aspects of the solution included:

The GBS model enabled the client to…

Integrate P2P operations across multiple offices. This allowed for early payments to suppliers, negotiation of better payment terms and reduced revenue leakage. Exception handling improved thanks to the dashboard, which helped minimize invoice aging.

Qualitative benefits included:

• Provided the client onshore team with improved visibility into bottlenecks using interactive Power BI dashboards
• Minimized the risk of duplicate payments

 percent faster handling of vendor reconciliations owing to process automation

~ percent increased efficiency in AP processes

 percent reduction in queries and open items through improved query management

AUD Million in vendor debit balances cleared