BAE Systems Automates Balance Sheet Reconciliations for Increased Control and Visibility
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BAE Systems is saving a significant amount of time with a single, standardized approach to balance sheet reconciliations on a global scale using the Cadency solution. The shift from manual to automatic has enabled BAE Systems to optimize and drive further efficiencies in their reconciliation process,
The Business Drivers to Automate
BAE Systems was struggling with a highly manual, spreadsheet-dependent process for its reconciliations and was looking to gain greater standardization and control across this process. With multiple ERP systems including SAP, Oracle, Sage, etc., different ways of working across the teams, and disparate processes among business units, there was a lack of visibility and confidence in the accuracy of the numbers they were reporting.
Why BAE Systems Chose Cadency
The BAE Systems team knew they needed a solution and decided to move to a Shared Services model to standardize this process. “With the move to a Shared Service Center, we would gain Trintech’s solutions to standardize and automate our previously manual reconciliation process,” said Philip Rogers, Finance Systems Manager | Financial Controls & Systems Capability Centre at BAE Systems.
Global Balance Sheet Standardization
Following the successful roll-out of Trintech’s solutions, BAE Systems has achieved a single, standardized approach to balance sheet management on a global scale. “Cadency has made a remarkable impact on how we control the balance sheet within the business,” said Rogers. Since deploying Cadency across their Shared Services Centers, reconciliations have required less manual effort thanks to increased automation and the application of a risk-based strategy.
In addition, the use of a centralized global solution has provided greater insight into the total number of reconciliations performed as well as their timeliness and accuracy. “We have flat files that come from various locations into Cadency and once the data is in Cadency, we have deployed a bot that prepares the reconciliation and gets it to the review stage and will attach the supporting documentation automatically,” said Rogers. “The bot really does the heavy lifting and has alleviated a significant amount of time the team previously spent on this process.”
Now that we have standardized and automated our reconciliation process with Trintech, we are very focused on continuing to optimize to drive further efficiencies.”
Perfecting Balance Sheet Reconciliations
From a reporting perspective, the BAE System’s leadership team now has full visibility into a dashboard that allows them to drill-down into any account and identify risk on the balance sheet. “The control and visibility on the reconciliation items is hugely valuable to us,” said Rogers. “Before, we had zero visibility into this and now it is visible with a touch of a button.”
Overall, BAE Systems has saved a significant amount of time each month by partnering with Trintech. “We have over 300 automated bank reconciliations within the solution which has allowed us to save 13 hours a month on the reconciliation process,” continued Rogers. “That time savings was also already on top of a head reduction already delivered.”
Looking ahead, automation will continue to be an integral part of the BAE Systems finance strategy.
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