Client background

Client: American chain of department stores

Industry type: Retail

Products / Services / Core Business: Clothing, footwear, bedding, furniture, etc.

Geography / Areas of operations: USA

Challenges

The client’s ERP system, which has been supporting Finance & HR functions, was deployed over 15 years ago. This led to:

• Lack of scalability with legacy PeopleSoft ERP hitting its scalability limit, becoming an impediment to business growth
  
• Lack of accuracy and rigor in invoice-matching, resulting in significant manual effort
• Inefficiencies in ‘Opportunistic Buying’ – a core process to achieve competitive advantage – due to difficulties in matching PO with received shipments
• Lack of agility due to inconsistency between ERP system and actual company structure, resulting in manual effort for reconciliations

To achieve its revenue targets without any bottlenecks, the client needed a robust solution that could help streamline financial business processes.

Solution

After due-diligence of client’s IT landscape and challenges, Wipro recommended re-implementation of PeopleSoft Version 9.2 as opposed to an upgrade, and identified significant opportunities for improvement. Key aspects of the solution included:

• Consolidation of Chart of Accounts for over 1000 stores and synchronization with other connected systems (reporting, analytics, supplier portal)
• Integration of 3^rd party Master Data Management solution with PeopleSoft, and establishment of strict data governance process to eliminate duplication of records
• Ensuring data retention and archival – compliant with ACS and IFRS
• Accurate setup of complex organization structure onto the system to ensure proper allocation of costs, profits and taxes
• Automation of invoice-matching processes, with implementation of a bespoke engine for exception handling

Additionally, Wipro successfully drove organizational change management throughout the program.

Business impact

Wipro’s solution resulted in the following benefits:

• Over 90% auto-match leveraging industry-leading invoice-matching engine
• 90% reduction in paperwork in CFO organization due to improvements in processes and workflows
• Streamlined procurement engine of around $1+ Billion annual spend
• IFRS 16 compliance for leased assets worth billions of dollars
• Streamlining of accounting leading to significant annual savings in tax audits & penalties

“Understanding of client needs, deep domain expertise and rigorous planning was key to the success of this program. With the power of automation and a highly simplified financial structure, the client could achieve scalability, agility and efficiency.”

- Balasubramanian Ramalingam, Practice Head – Oracle EBS, PeopleSoft & ERP Cloud, Oracle Practice, Wipro Limited