Judges highlight value-added partnership and finance transformation as leading examples of innovation in operational redesign
UCB, a multinational biopharmaceutical company, and Genpact (NYSE: G), a global leader in designing, transforming, and running intelligent business operations, have received the Aecus Innovation Award in recognition of their close collaboration in driving transformation that achieved far-reaching operational efficiencies in UCB’s global business services (GBS) finance organization.
The Aecus Innovation Awards acknowledge service providers and clients that work together effectively to embrace the innovative promise of outsourcing. Aecus highlights the best examples of companies that deliver value by applying new techniques and technologies.
The UCB-Genpact relationship began in 2009 with finance and accounting process management and in 2013, UCB adopted a global business services model for its finance function, including tax, source to pay, record to report, and order to cash processes across numerous countries.
UCB had a target to reduce its GBS expenses in 2014 and aimed to streamline operations to make them more agile and effective, as well as better able to provide management insight and secure compliance.
Genpact and UCB designed and implemented a transformation roadmap to drive efficiencies, enhance compliance, and improve customer satisfaction. By applying Genpact’s experience in process, analytics and technology to UCB’s global business services, the UCB-Genpact team redesigned numerous operations, which resulted in increased employee productivity and annual savings, among other benefits.
UCB and Genpact received the award as a result of their close partnership, one-team spirit, and successful implementation of the roadmap. In less than 12 months, they designed and implemented more than 20 projects across 25 countries.
The transformative approach combined Lean Six Sigma initiatives, targeted and effective implementation of automation, and process redesign. For example, the creation of an assembly line model in the record to report process enabled:
- One common vision and global standards for policies and procedures;
- Enhanced record to record process controls for better compliance;
- Standardized, high-quality services for customers;
- Process efficiencies by eliminating non-value-adding steps; and
- Robust governance to improve overall effectiveness.
Other initiatives include automating vendor invoices and designing and executing a supplier relationship management system for the source to pay process. UCB and Genpact also implemented projects to support UCB’s business by optimizing working capital, enhance customer satisfaction by simplifying finance processes, and improve compliance by establishing an internal controls framework. The team drove finance process transformation by addressing the end-to- end cycle of execution, visibility of related impact, and steering of performance, making those operations better able to sense, act and learn from their actions—in short, more intelligent.
“While case studies like UCB-Genpact are still relatively rare, increasingly these sorts of value-creating partnerships show the way forward. In a competitive marketplace, buyers of outsourcing are starting to aim for more,” says Paul Morrison, partner and Head of Innovation Services at Aecus. “We were struck by the range of positive outcomes from this innovation—the project boosted so many areas, with improvements throughout UCB.”
“UCB welcomes the recognition of its investment in global business services and we’re delighted to receive the Aecus Innovation Award,” says Constanze Nuesperling, vice president, Partnerships and Performance Management at UCB. “Working with Genpact gives us access to the latest best practices, benchmarking data, and innovative solutions that enabled us to meet our cost-reduction target in 2014. UCB and Genpact worked as a true team to deliver these benefits.”
“This award reflects the strength of the collaboration between UCB and Genpact. It underscores Genpact’s ability to deliver intelligent operations that help UCB continuously adapt to the business environment,” says Peter Sheppard, vice president, Life Sciences, Europe at Genpact. “We look forward to building on this success and our partnership to deliver even greater results.”
The Genpact-UCB case study can be accessed at http://www.genpact.com/docs/default-source/pdf/enabling-business-transformation-at-ucb-global-business-services.pdf.