International
Luxury goods are a global phenomenon. Chanel’s customers rush to purchase the same bottle of No. 5 perfume worldwide. But the company’s internal finance and procurement systems, operations and processes varied by region, reflecting an organisation that values dialogue and consensus.
Global Finance leaders drew up an ambitious vision of professionalising indirect procurement worldwide, harmonising processes and deploying a leading technology platform (COUPA) as the foundation. The project business case was built on expected improvements in business processes as well as acting as a trailblazer project as the first global finance transformation at this scale.
BearingPoint was selected as the COUPA integrator and strategic partner and built an integrated team with Chanel, using hubs in London, Paris, Asia and a nearshore centre in Romania. Successful international project delivery relied on three key ingredients:
- Complementarity and adaptability of a team capable of collaborating around the globe
- Effectiveness of governance and engagement with regional stakeholders
- Innovation and user-centricity of approach to communication, learning and transformation
The team designed and agreed a Global Core Model of processes for the Sourcing of suppliers through to Payment, the end-to-end (S2P) process. This model on the COUPA platform has been successfully deployed in two Pilot markets (Hong Kong-Macao and Luxembourg) in autumn 2022 and four markets across Asia (mainland China, Taiwan, Malaysia and Thailand) in May 2023.
The project is delivering business value, high levels of user adoption and the capability and skills for future finance transformation.
View the BearingPoint profile in the MCA Members Directory.