Broadridge Leverages Kofax Expertise to Build Out AP Operations

Spun off from ADP in 2007, Broadridge Financial Solutions is a global provider of technology based outsourcing solutions to the financial industry. Through services that range from investor communications to securities processing and clearing operations, Broadridge helps financial firms avoid significant capital investments in operations infrastructure by offering a wide range of cost effective and scalable multicurrency processing solutions. Headquartered in Lake Success, New York, with regional and local centers across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia, its integrated systems and services are used by global banks, brokerage and investment firms, mutual and hedge funds, clearing houses, public corporations and institutions. In 2008, Broadridge recorded revenues in excess of $2.2 billion, with approximately 4,850 employees worldwide.

Transition Deadline Creates Unique Challenges

Following its 2007 spinoff from ADP, the financial team at Broadridge faced a hard and fast deadline. Within six to nine months, they needed to create, from the ground up, a new Accounts Payable (AP) operation for their multibillion dollar company and go “live” with the new system, thereby severing remaining ties to ADP and its short term transition service. At the same time, they needed to facilitate a one-time movement of legacy information and data from the ADP based accounts payable system.

Realizing the Vision of Efficiency and Process Control

From the beginning, the finance team envisioned a solution that would combine a very efficient back office operation with automated processes and built-in financial controls. Success would be defined by increased visibility, accountability and control over the day to day business of AP operations – a daunting challenge given Broadridge’s highly decentralized field operations.

Broadridge knew it had the right people in place, but they also needed to know that they had the right solution. They found that solution with Kofax and its MarkView Financial Suite.

“For decades, Broadridge has been a major player in the financial outsourcing industry,” said Steven Mianowski, Director of Finance Shared Services at Broadridge. “But with the spinoff, from an accounting perspective, we were essentially a new company, albeit one with billions of dollars in annual revenues. The pressure was on to get it right the first time around with a robust solution that anticipated the needs of our organization.”

At first glance, MarkView appeared to have all the capabilities the team desired: comprehensive invoice management, workflow automation and approval process support built upon its chosen ERP foundation; an interface that took full advantage of Oracle’s data storage and retrieval strengths, yet hid these complexities from users through its easy to use, task oriented interface; and configurable processes that provided the controls the AP department required to enforce corporate policies and procedures.

Of special importance to Broadridge, MarkView also provided instant, drilldown visibility into all types of financial information, such as the total value of invoices with discount terms awaiting approval or who approved a specific invoice and when. But in hindsight, Kofax delivered something more – a sincere interest in their business.

“We are a big company with a lean AP organization,” Mianowski said, “so being able to get advice and consultation, particularly with respect to what has been shown to work or not work, or how other companies are tackling issues created by a constantly changing AP environment, adds tre­mendous value and perspective. It’s clear that Kofax has a customer focused philosophy that produces winners on all sides. We gain a valuable resource that is able to convey a level of knowledge and insight that is much bigger than any one organization and is reflected in the depth of its products, whereas Kofax gains a feedback loop that keeps it at the forefront of finance workflow innovation and best practices.”

As an example, Mianowski pointed to the exception workflow capabilities within MarkView. While most solutions are “pretty vanilla,” MarkView takes into account many of the exceptions that invariably happen in AP processes, allowing these events to be quickly managed in a controlled and deliberate manner.

“Clearly, advance thought and a lot of customer experience was put into MarkView’s exception management functionality,” Mianowski said. “As a result, it is a very complete product that minimizes the need for administrator interventions, which is the bane of efficiency and cost containment efforts. Every time you interject people into the invoice management and approval process, you impact the overall efficiency of financial operations.”

Looking Back on a Successful Year

In less than a year, the Broadridge team set up an AP operation from scratch, stripped out pre-existing AP information from ADP, set up an offshore operation in India (a move made possible by its smooth transition to end to end automated processes), instituted MarkView enabled best practice automation, review and approval capabilities, and increased the accuracy, visibility and control of financial information.

“Honestly, there is no possible way we could have met our goals without a robust work­flow solution for AP, backed by a team that was committed to our success,” Mianowski said. If we’d put in a less robust solution, the solution would have would have failed us, in a sense, more so than people. In this case, the solution was solid, our people were able to learn it quickly and we were able to maintain control of our business. It’s a credit to everyone involved.”