Improving Cost Management Efficiency

 

Acrontum’s MLC (Management, Licences & Content) team juggles more than 120 different service providers as part of the service provided to a large automaker.  The MLC team is responsible for various digital services within the auto company, including the management of their budgets and invoices.

As the financial management became more complex, the team required a centralised, standardised tool to automate the various financial processes. They needed a solution that could connect suppliers, buyers, controllers, accounting, production and technical departments. Acrontum was able to meet their needs by devising an operational, financial planning tool that ticked all of the boxes for security, accuracy and centralization. 

 

BACKGROUND

Acrontum focused their efforts on the various operational financial processes handled by the MLC team every month, including the invoices, payment, and purchase orders for various digital services departments within the company. 

Strict targets must be reached every month, and the team is responsible for carrying out forecasts, budget planning, reviewing and recording requests and checking purchase order files for five different countries. 

This requires a great deal of detail and attention as the smallest mistake could jeopardise the entire budget and, as a consequence, digital service delivery to end customers. In addition to working with more than fifty internal business departments, the MLC team handles highly confidential data supplied to the automaker by vendors and service providers: This data cannot be freely shared or accessed by Acrontum or any other suppliers. 

GOALS & CHALLENGES

Operational financial processes for the client are complex and require stringent data handling and privacy controls. In a nutshell, the MLC team receives invoices from the Accounting Department. These costs are registered against the cost centre, which has to be validated by both the MLC team and the business department. All discrepancies must be identified, and costs must be assigned to the appropriate year and correct cost centre. 

Wherever revisions are required, strict revision conditions must be met and confidential information must be saved in a secure, structured and gapless way. 

As the team was heavily reliant on Excel to fulfil their duties, only one team member was able to work on a file at a time. The process was not only inefficient and time-consuming; it had a greater margin of error due to the manual nature of the system.

STRATEGIES

To meet these challenges head-on, Acrontum developed an operational, financial planning tool with a strong emphasis on data security and access rights to automate and centralise these processes. This tool gave teams the ability to register invoices and view the status directly from the budget.  The entire process became more efficient, transparent and simpler. 

The business process and relevant stakeholders were captured using the Business Process Modeling Notation 2.0, or BPMN 2.0. BPMN 2.0 created a simple overview of the entire process so that stakeholders could validate, adjust and complete the inputs required, and helped the software team to rapidly grasp the software requirements during the early design phases. Capturing the As-Is-Scenario brought far greater accuracy to the process as it enabled the developers and business partners to quickly spot and rectify potential delays and mistakes. 

The individual steps in the process were transferred to fat-marker sketches of the app screens, which were used to create wireframes and mock-ups for review. The approach, coupled with reusable frontend web components, saved time and money and reduced the learning curve for users. 

RESULTS

The automation enables users to retrieve invoice data from SAP at intervals configured to exact demand and performance requirements. As soon as data is retrieved, the application notifies the relevant users along the approval workflow via email. Confidential information is stored exclusively in the Intranet-hosted application and not shared inside the email message to keep data secure.  The notifications also serve to remind the responsible party to take action within the specified time period. 

Invoice validation has been simplified for the end user through an integral system of colours, warnings and tooltips that highlight important details during the process. Budget, sub-budget, supplier and invoice data is organised in a small data warehouse that enables users to view important information using different views and forms of aggregation. 

Accuracy was further improved by implementing automatic validations (e. g. when the budget is not sufficient to pay the invoice) that effectively reduce the errors associated with manual data capturing and validation. 

As the data in the system is highly confidential, Acrontum created a robust rights and permission system to avoid any unauthorised data views and leaks. Rigorous testing and stringent data privacy and information security processes were used to ensure that risks were reduced. 

In short, as a direct result of the project, the MLC team has been freed up to address more pressing matters, and the entire validation process has been sped up and streamlined without compromising on data privacy or accuracy.