Serco Group plc Increases Efficiencies andReduces Enterprise Risk by AutomatingFinancial Processes with Cadency® by Trintech
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About Serco Group plc
Serco Group plc is a leading provider of professional, technology, engineering, and management services. They advise, design, integrate, and deliver solutions that transform how clients achieve their missions. Their customer-first approach, robust portfolio of services and global experience enable them to respond with solutions that achieve outcomes with value. Serco Group plc primarily derives income as a contractor for the provision of government services, most prominently in the sectors of law & order, health, transport, justice, immigration, defense and citizens services. Serco manages over 500 contracts worldwide, employing over 60,000 people. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.
The Roll-Out
Serco achieved a very successful implementation of Cadency and contributes the seamless roll-out to a few factors. “There are many different factors to consider in the implementation process and getting just one wrong could be the reason a project fails. This includes not fully understanding the original requirement, scale/complexity of the change, speed of implementation, lack of executive support, insufficient project governance, lack of training, resistance to change, lack of technical expertise, etc. We made sure we were aligned across the business before we embarked on this transformation which was critical to the success.”
As Serco continued to build upon their finance strategy, they decided to outsource several of their F&A processes to Accenture, a leading BPO provider. “What we have seen in the past is many large multinational companies have outsourced parts of their F&A function and it was typically limited to tasks like transactional processing. However, in recent years, the scope of the outsourced work has increased,” explained Adams.”
Risk-Enabled Automation
Today, Serco is running 5,000 balance sheet reconciliations through Cadency on a monthly basis. To gain even further efficiencies, Serco also utilizes Trintech’s SAP connector.
“This connector automatically interfaces data flows from our SAP instance into Cadency so our team can begin analyzing it within minutes. Having the direct interface from SAP also gives confidence in the data matching between the two systems,” said Adams.
Serco has also seen success in leveraging automation for its transaction matching process. “Today, we auto-match 15,000 accounts which has saved us a total of 500 hours per month.
ROI Achieved
Automation has not only reduced Serco’s cost but also allows their team to focus on more value-added tasks. “Competition for talent is a big focus and challenge for many organizations today,” continued Adams.
“Automation can help retain your resources by allowing them to focus on value-added tasks instead of the manual, transactional processes.” Not only does technology help retain your talent, but it also helps when churn does happen. “What we have seen in the past is that process or system knowledge gets lost when people leave the organization. By having all the processes standardized and documented within Cadency, you reduce the risk of that tacit knowledge walking out the door when people leave.”
From a reporting perspective, Serco’s leadership team now has full visibility into a Reporting dashboard that allows them to drill-down into any account and identify risk on the balance sheet. “
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