Situation and Complexities:
The Life Insurance Company was struck with manual processes running across its 300 branches (these were likely to grow to 600+ branches). Voluminous quantity of paper used to be moved to the central processing cell, at the corporate office, using couriers. Due to the volume and the checks required, the lead time to complete the transactions was long. This resulted in poor productivity and internal customer dissatisfaction. The accounts payable team had difficulty in passing the payments, tracking the budget and also adhering to the policies as manual check was the only feasible method. Feasibility of the manual checks to meet audit and compliance requirements was a big issue as the transactions were large in numbers. Sourcing was a concern as spend was scattered. Tracking and reporting of expenses was poor and delayed. The growth phase and the related cost management requirements weighed heavily on the management team.
Target:
The principal target was to reach a 95% electronic bill processing and payment capability for all the branches. The bill processing time had to be reduced by 60%. The vendor and employee payment transaction in the central cell had to be made paperless. In sourcing there was a need to categorize spend/ expenses and have centralized contracts governing spend behavior across the business.
BAZ Implementation:
The BAZ implementation mainly revolved around the deployment of the Procure to Pay, Vendor Management, Contract Management, Non PO Invoices, Expenses and CTC reimbursements and Petty Cash Management modules. It was handled by a 7 member cross-functional team of the client, supported by an IT member and Empronc member. On completion of the scoping exercise, the team agreed on adopting the best practices already built into the BAZ product. BAZ standard implementation protocol was followed and the set-up was completed to suit the business requirements.
This particular implementation saw the application upload into the server in record six hours. The seven power users conducted training in 4 regional locations. The BAZ L1 help desk successfully handled 35-40 calls per day to facilitate the learning process during the peak implementation phase. The go-live was smooth and incident free for all the branches. An independent external team was hired to carryout concurrency testing and certification was obtained for 500 concurrent users.
Benefits:
The client now processes 1000+ electronic claims daily. This is at 96% adherence to the computerization requirement. The tracking of the documents is on real time basis (powered by the document upload features of BAZ). This is additionally supported by 70 transactional reports for various groups. An upload utility enables bulk requisitioning and payment as and when desired. Employee reimbursements have become paperless. All spend categories including non PO based vendor payments have been categorized for spend and sourcing management. The issue of duplicate vendor invoices is now non existent. The scale up of the branches from 300 to 600+ was smooth, as BAZ comfortably e-enabled all the key Finance and Procurement requirements. Audit trails and compliance benefits have been reaped. The BAZ product has added significant value to the business and the lives of the 5000+ users of the system. |
