Co-creation Helps in Business Transformation Led by Digitization & RPA

This is our story of co-creating a solution with a leading transportation and logistics company

As we know…

Freight and logistics entail complex operations, multiple touchpoints and transactions. Disparate and manual processes result in revenue leakage, reduced cash flow and high operational costs. By leveraging process excellence, digitization and Robotic Process Automation (RPA), logistics companies can help automate the workflow, improve process efficiency and release working capital.

The challenge for the logistics company was…

A significant level of revenue leakage, blocked working capital of ~USD 25 Million and average cycle time of 15 days in its Finance and Accounting (F&A) operations across several business units. One of the root causes was manual F&A processes with limited audit checks, compliance and control. Additionally, the company was on an expansion spree through acquisitions. This had led to siloed technology systems and disparate processes across multiple locations leading to gaps in communication.

Here’s what we co-created as a solution…

WNS developed a business transformation solution led by RPA and digitization. We leveraged our domain knowledge and experience in managing F&A operations for similar clients to design a three-pronged approach underpinned by our proprietary Robotics and Digital Automation TRAC^TM.

Key aspects of the approach include:

• Simplification and Harmonization

  • Establishing a Center of Excellence (CoE) to standardize and centralize all F&A operations across North America and APAC regions

• Digitization and Robotics

  • Leveraging Robotics and Digital Automation TRACTM suite to identify, flag and re-assign duplicate invoices based on multiple parameters; this helped identify revenue leakages

• Process Excellence

  • Designing and deploying a risk compliance framework to flag all non-standard processes, and identify risks and non-compliance with end-customer terms and conditions

  • Identifying early payments on non-critical invoices that were impacting the cash flow and late payments that were resulting in penalties; analyzing the vendor list to identify and highlight those that required immediate payments

Our learnings and outcomes from the process of co-creation are…

That process excellence through standardization and centralization can lead to improved compliance and end-customer satisfaction.

Other significant benefits include:

• More than USD 100 Million working capital freed to generate annual interest savings of close to USD 0.8 Million

• Duplicate payments worth ~USD 2 Million identified and recoveries initiated

• Urgent invoice volume reduced from ~USD 20 Million to ~USD 2 Million

• Early payments reduced from more than USD 11 Million to ~USD 1.5 Million

• Late payments reduced from ~USD 7 Million to ~USD 0.7 Million

• Average cycle time reduced from 15 days to 6 days

• 80 percent reduction in duplicate invoices

To view the infographic, click here.