Japanese automobile company drives greater efficiency within its finance function

Working with Capgemini, the organization standardizes its ways of working while introducing digital and automation technology to achieve more efficient, accurate, and rapid finance and accounting processes

Client Challenge: A Japanese automobile company wanted to standardize its finance operations and processes in order to become more efficient and reduce costs

Solution: Through a partnership with Capgemini, the organization shifted part of its finance operations to China, streamlining its ways of working and identifying opportunities to leverage intelligent automation to further improve its processes

Benefits:
Reduced costs for finance operations
Greater efficiency in terms of employee time and expenses
Greater accuracy and speed of documentation
Improved operational performance visibility and reporting model

Vision-oriented changes

All businesses begin with a vision, an established goal that they feel can be obtained or a dream to be fulfilled. For automotive manufacturers, this typically includes the design and creation of vehicles that deliver on their customers’ travel and transportation requirements. To achieve these aspirations, every part of the company must work in unison towards a shared objective and be proactive in choosing digital transformation to enable that vision. When a Japanese automobile company realized that its finance processes had begun to struggle in this respect, the business rapidly worked to identify how to rectify the situation.

The organization began by centralizing its finance teams at its headquarters, but also understood that it needed to create further efficiency to once again be satisfied with the value it gained from this section of its business. In an effort to do so, the organization knew that it would require new technology, automation, and a partner with the experience and expertise to identify and implement a potent solution. To this end, the company partnered with Capgemini, which possessed substantial experience both within the industry and with innovative automation solutions.

Securing more efficient financial operations

Together, the partners began the process of clarifying the manufacturer’s specific needs and determining the technology that would be required to address them. Early on, the organization communicated a desire to find ways to cut costs without sacrificing the quality of its services. With this in mind, Capgemini introduced an off-site support team located in China. This provided comprehensive, cost-efficient services in the local language, which reduced cultural obstacles and further strengthened the partnership as a unified collaboration. The China team’s introduction followed Capgemini’s Global Process Model© (GPM) and represented the first step in the process.

The partners then turned their attention to implementing automated solutions that would reduce the amount of time the organization’s finance team would need to spend on manually processing physical documents. As part of this effort, the partners digitalized all existing finance processes, eliminating paper-based work and enabling the introduction of intelligent automation to process the documentation and enable the organization’s employees to focus on more challenging and value-adding work.

A future based on digital and automation technology

The introduction of intelligent automation did not stop after this initial success. Instead, the partners continued to look for new opportunities for robotic process automation (RPA) and other automated solutions to add value to the organization. Maintaining a constant alignment on the goals and requirements of these projects, the partners gradually rolled out new technology that further improved the finance team’s efficiency and drove the Japanese automotive company further along its digital transformation journey.

This had a wide variety of positive effects on the organization. In addition to lowering costs and enhancing efficiency, this new digital-focused approach also played a significant role in improving visibility into the manufacturer’s finance processes. The introduction of a new query-toresolve (Q2R) system enabled queries and requests to be traced, and a transparent status report to be created simultaneously. In addition, the various automation and digitalization efforts enabled the organization to standardize its ways of working, which positively impacted its control and compliance. Finally, the drive towards intelligent automation and digital technology has raised the accuracy of the organization’s payments to 99.5%.

Through their collaborative efforts, Capgemini and this Japanese automobile company have produced potent and exciting results that have improved both the supplier and customer experience. The organization’s suppliers now receive payment much more quickly and reliably, allowing customers to enjoy more accurate and timely billing. By doing so, the manufacturer has once again demonstrated leadership within its field and refocused the entirety of its attention on its goal of excelling in automotive design and the production of vehicles fit to its customers’ expectations.