BT Global Service

BT Global Service: introduction

Going Forward
BT Global Service Plan:
to grow the business in Asia Pacific.

Barriers:
different legal entities processes different ERP systems different banking platforms non-standardised reporting practices
--> very difficult to maintain visibility into financial information

Going Forward (2)

to ensure steady cash flow to develop the business: profit generation and working capital management. unified financial standards and systems across the whole region. basic principles of effective working capital management impact to the business:
Allow the company to transform profits into cash in a quicker manner, which in turn could be used to fund other initiatives Provide senior management with improved data on company finances and enable them to make timely decisions

Uniform Key Performance Indicator (KPI)

To achieve our mission of improving working capital management, it is important to have solid infrastructure from which we can achieve maximum efficiency. This efficiency would be driven by implementing an effective cash management information system.

When we started planning the project about three years ago 1. we applied a metric system to quantify improvements in working capital management on inventory, prepayment, accrued revenue, receivables, payables, accrual and deferred revenue. 2. The typical key performance indicator (KPI) of days sales outstanding (DSO) on accounts receivables a measurement of the average collection period for receivables was applied to track the effectiveness of

Setting Standards: Business Process Outsourcing

a series of inter-related projects to standardised procedures. These are:
1. Business Process Outsourcing
Outsource the Day-to-day transaction work (accounting transactions, payroll processing,etc) implemented a uniform approach for the routine transactions, so that the outsourcing process itself could be streamlined across the region.

Setting Standards: Bank Rationalisation

2. Bank Rationalisation transferring our numerous bank accounts into one bankfor the region. (HSBC) The ultimate objectives were to:
Optimise liquidity management to minimise the amount of cash in Asia and reduce unnecessary funding Automate processes and improve efficiencies through improved cash flow forecasting, better control of payments, and speeding up of collections Migrate manual to electronic payments Achieve complete visibility on all bank accounts

Setting Standards: Bank Rationalisation (2)

factors considered to choose banking partner :
geographic presence, cash management capability, industry experience and past performance
In the exercise, HSBC conduct thorough in-country reviews -->providing valuable recommendations to working capital and liquidity management processes.

benefits:
single online banking platform= increase accessability =enhanced visibility over cash in the region = reducing the amount of cash sitting in Asia.

Setting Standards: Shared Service Center

Shared Service Centre (SSC) While we outsourced transactional tasks, we kept finance work related to reporting, review, and analysis in house. One option was to have these tasks conducted independently in each entity. But this has the drawback of having several operations unnecessarily duplicated in the region. By setting up an SSC, we hoped to maximise efficiency by eliminating duplicative operations and ensure uniform standard of work. Our SSC staff would be dedicated to looking after 70 bank accounts in the region and see to the cash position of any of the groups entities.

Setting Standards: Global Finance Platform

Global Finance Platform (GFP): To underpin our project, we wanted a unified internal financial platform that would be used not just by us, but ultimately by BT Group worldwide. This system would have a data hub to access information from any of the group entities. Bringing all of this data together will provide a powerful tool for stakeholders throughout the company: for example, the CFO in London will be able to access financial information about the business in Asia-Pacific. The GFP would help implement process improvement by gathering a broad range of business data from procure-to-pay, order-to-cash, cash management, accounting-to-reporting and from management accounts to statutory accounts. The value in having such a system is in analysing the links between data points such as providing a bridge between the budget and balance sheet.