Overview

This global powerhouse in electronics and electrical engineering created a shared services organization to support its financial operations in North America. The team focuses on standardization and automation to drive cost savings for the divisions it supports, focusing first on high-volume processes that deliver the greatest benefit.

Prevention is so important to us because it takes away the rework and helps us to improve our processes so we don’t have errors on the back end.”

– Manager of AP, Global Shared Services North America

Challenge

With 80,000 vendors and more than $20 billion in annual disbursements, the shared services team looked for ways to prevent overpayment errors and fraud. Executives turned to apexanalytix for a comprehensive platform of software and services.

Solution

The organization chose to adopt apexanalytix firststrike® software to analyze mountains of transaction details from multiple systems—including the company’s ERP, credit card, travel and expense platforms. Analytics are used to prevent overpayments and to scan data for high-risk attributes linked to fraud scams. Detailed reports flag suspicious transactions, rank-order risks and provide internal investigators with the detailed information they need to take immediate action.

Results

• Used firststrike to find and recover over $2 million in historical overpayments.

• Dramatically reduced duplicate payments, far outperforming peer organizations. A subsequent audit of $20 billion in disbursements found just three duplicates that escaped controls, totaling less than $10,000.

• Used data from firststrike for root cause analysis and continuous improvement.

• Reduced risks by adding automated fraud checks to the vendor setup process.

• Identified disbursements routinely issued earlier than required by payment terms and made process changes to improve cash management.

• Used firststrike reports to analyze spending and support strategic sourcing decisions.

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