Tailored Mobility Financial Services for a Global Chemical Company

Success Stories: Tailored Mobility Financial Services for a Global Chemical Company

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The world’s leading chemical and materials company partnered with BGRS to leverage a global management framework for mobility program funding, multi-currency billing, mobile employee and mobility supplier payments, and billing audit.

CLIENT PROFILE

Industry:

Chemical

HQ Region:

EMEA

Program Size:

1,200 mobile employees

Services Provided:

  • Talent Mobility Program Administration
  • Talent Mobility Consulting
  • Financial Services
    • Expense Management
    • Funding and Billing
    • Supplier Invoice Payments

CLIENT OBJECTIVES

The client, the world’s leading chemical and materials company with operations in more than 80 countries, initially outsourced certain administrative elements of their mobility program. Three years later, they were looking for a service partner with the capability to enhance employee experience through a global service delivery model, providing the client with a dedicated account management structure, integrated supply chain management, and globally consistent program performance measurement.

Moreover, financial process improvement was critical as the client sought a mobility management service provider capable of delivering sophisticated and configurable mobility financial services and support, including:

  • Creating a new hybrid billing model with both centralized and decentralized billing
  • Improving the quality and accuracy of billing data and implementing new billing procedures
  • Billing in multiple currencies aligned to the regional and local business units’ needs
  • Reducing cost and cycle-time of internal billing audit
  • Enabling local billing and funding model in China
  • Implementing an e-billing process
  • Implementing a clear global approach to supplier payments and audit
  • Allowing the client to disburse in locations with currency restrictions or withholding concerns while providing the audit service to capture expenses as part of overall program reporting

"Global mobility is critical to our talent development strategy. More than 80% of our senior executives have an international experience. Finding a service partner that will ensure our relocating employees and HR teams are receiving the best possible support and assistance in all areas, including financial services, was key."

Head of Corporate Mobility

The client’s mobility program footprint and an ambitious timeline, driven both by the transition to a new service provider and changes in internal financial processes, brought in additional considerations, such as:

  • Client mobility team requiring additional service partner support as they focused on new relocation management company implementation and billing changes in parallel
  • Complexity of client policy and currency combinations requiring the creation of 200 billing programs
  • Accelerated timeline to assess existing client’s suppliers for vendor due diligence to ensure a seamless transition
  • Supporting the client teams through significant increase in internal purchase order creation
  • Upskilling and coaching local HR stakeholders on new process and reporting

BGRS SOLUTION

The client selected BGRS to provide the full mobility program management including talent mobility program administration, financial services, supply chain management, and talent mobility consulting.

In the area of mobility-related financial services, the key aspects of the BGRS solution included:

  • Hosting collaborative workshops with international mobility teams in four key mobility hubs to support seamless transition to a new solution
  • Appointing a BGRS Financial Account Manager to implement the new solution and remain engaged in future relationships to provide continuity
  • Establishing a hybrid billing model allowing centralized and de-centralized regional billing process and local billing available in eight currencies (EUR, USD, HKD, SGD, INR, JPY, BRL, CNY)
  • Offering billing and funding solutions in China, Brazil, and Argentina
  • Supporting existing client’s suppliers through vendor due diligence process, to identify and address areas of risk and compliance.

"The client had to manage the transition to extremely tight deadlines, so collaboration, proactivity, and strong communication between the BGRS and the client teams was critical to the project success. Our focus on fully understanding the client’s needs helped us to quickly identify and implement the best solution in each project workstream. Our recommendation of adopting an agile approach provided the flexibility required to meet the overall deadline with no disruption to client processes or impact to the client’s employees."

Peter Hopkins
Vice President, Client Services
BGRS

RESULTS AND OUTCOMES

In parallel to supporting the client through a full mobility program management vendor transition, BGRS rapidly delivered the following key positive outcomes in the area of mobility financial services:

  • Completion of a full implementation in under four months ensuring no disruption to services and more than 1,000 regular monthly payments
  • Design and implementation of 200 tailored billing programs for each policy/currency combination, providing flexibility and ability to bill in different currencies depending on the assignment billing location
  • Implementation of supplier payments and audit to 90 suppliers in 72 countries. This included enhancing several control areas, such as additional encryption of data or advanced disaster recovery framework for existing client’s suppliers
  • Met billing accuracy SLA at 99% for first calendar year of the client engagement
  • Ongoing identification and implementation of new disburse, audit, and local currency payment solutions into new client locations, such as Nigeria, Morocco, Algeria, Ivory Coast, Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan
  • Support of the client internal teams to prepare for the launch of the e-billing functionality
  • Key efficiencies, such as reduced number of invoicing locations, eliminating recharge challenges, and simplified invoice format, were realized by creating tailored regional billing modes

"We were looking for a partner that will be able to support the complexity of our mobility program, guiding us through opportunities to simplify and enforce consistency, while providing flexibility where warranted. BGRS has been such a partner over the last 12 months and I am looking forward to the joint road ahead."

Head of Corporate Mobility

At BGRS we focus on configuring our solutions to the clients’ needs. Deploying specific solution elements, such as financial services, as parallel distinct workstreams involving different client’s stakeholder groups, is often critical to the success of the overall engagement. In this case, we were able to critically and successfully support the client’s corporate mobility and finance teams through a significant change management effort without any disruption to internal and employee services.

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