Putting business performance management in order with better and faster insights

Like so many multinationals with a global workforce in diverse markets, this snack foods giant had a cohesion problem. Finance operations in its far-flung locations had non-uniform standards, frequencies, and reporting methods, and so management didn't have a clear picture of subprocesses, SLA trends, or other important operational issues. Also, the firm was hamstrung by manual reconciliation procedures and legacy systems.

All of this meant that it didn't have an effective way of gathering data and developing metrics to compare the business performance of its units across regions meaningfully – and that was holding it back. Working with questionable information, it couldn't be certain that it had the right data in hand to make the best business decisions.

When the firm turned to us, we knew exactly what to recommend. Genpact's cloud-based Enterprise Performance Optimizer was just what our client needed to derive timely, actionable business intelligence from its finance organization.

We went to work using our Lean Digital^SM approach, which combines functional knowledge with design thinking and Lean principles to use digital technologies effectively to rethink business processes and outcomes. With Lean, our client could avoid the pitfalls of piecemeal digitization and incremental process improvement despite its legacy environment. And when finished, the client had a scalable business platform offering a single view of real-time, uniform financial data and insights across all regions and business units.

Our work with the client stood on two pillars – identify true north and apply Lean principles for process transformation.

Genpact initially helped this multinational identify its desired business outcomes – its true north. Then we established the goals, strategies, and actions – all continuously aligned to the business value – that would get it there.

Our starting point was the firm's record-to-report processes, by which it had identified desired business outcomes related to time to report, controllership, cost, and standardization.

Genpact also helped establish, on both a geographic and process basis, the key performance indicators and critical performance indicators for those business outcomes. This standardization made it possible to view processes and subprocesses at a geographic level and to access geographic data at a process level.

Next, we found and sourced the data that was supporting value-creating cross-function linkages (figure 1). In this way, the client focused only on relevant data and data sources. We then used this granular-level data to assess performance against the indicators and benchmarks we had set.

As Enterprise Performance Optimizer is delivered on a SaaS platform, the snack foods major could implement it at scale without heavy capital or data center investment, and with minimal IT support. Because the company now has a clearer view of business performance globally, it can deploy its resources more efficiently. With accurate and meaningful information now available through a single portal 24/7, management doesn't have to invest time in creating static dashboards or presentations, and can instead focus on better analysis and decision-making.

The granular view of data also results in more agile, realtime responses to problems across the organization. For example, the system generates alerts when there are issues with SLAs and provides rule-based authorization, access, and escalation. It also allows users to create custom reports.

The uniformity this digital solution brings in fosters collaboration across teams because everyone is on the same page. And it helps people stay more focused on business outcomes. Finally, because it provides ongoing feedback, the solution is a source of constant insights into improving business and finance operations. And as the company continuously fine-tunes its business performance, it makes steady progress on its finance transformation journey.