BY ULLEKH N.P. (EDITOR CFO MAGAZINE)
EFFECTIVE BLENDING OF SYSTEM and review mechanisms: A narration by Manish Bazari, Director, Empronc Solutions (for a Customer in the Travel Industry who actively use BAZ® to reduce costs and enhance compliance ) The global down turn in the third quarter of 2009 forced organizations to take a deeper look at their cost base and to deploy effective and sustainable cost control measures. Confronted with such a scenario, the Customer embarked on its journey of reducing its operating costs through a rigorous process of analysis, reviews and change management. The CFO put BAZ to use in their all India Operations. The effective use of BAZ, an integrated Expense Management Solution, along with its automated Budget Control enabled the company to have cost control on a real time basis. The solution deployed across all company locations took cost control to the transaction level. The software is used by at least 500 direct users of the company for a variety of business transactions around Spend Management. The cost focus supported by an open culture, team work and early use of an automated solution enabled a mid teens reduction in operating costs. Mandating that the system is used for all types of expenses such as direct purchase, services, employee reimbursements and travel enabled the desired level of control to affect savings and to deliver the cost reduction targets. Integrity of the budgets was ensured in a changing environment. The visibility achieved through the system and the e-alerts reduced the dependency on people for compliance. The organization is now focused on sustaining the benefits and at the same time keeping expense growth lower than the growth in the business. The ease of use of the software (on account of the user friendliness of the screens, workflows and system driven controls) provides a platform for scale-up on size and the use of other value adding modules to enhance capital efficiencies. As is the case with every growing organization, compliance and transaction productivity become paramount. This again was well achieved through the BAZ system that provided for the system implementation of the company policies, on line document control and the process work flows to support Corporate Governance philosophy of the company. The sheer comfort of being audit ready at any time is by itself a big step…and through system approach and solution, the Customer is getting there. |
