Business Process Outsourcing

HP Services portfolio

Services information

"Our existing alliance and HP's proven ability to innovate makes them a strong fit and an ideal partner for our accounts payable services. During the past ten months of our partnership, HP has exhibited a deep understanding of our business, culture, and values. Its own business operations are similar in scope and scale, and we are confident that HP can effectively leverage its own experience to help P&G innovate and drive value for consumers and shareholders."

Filippo Passerini
Chief Information and Global Business Services Officer
Procter & Gamble

Procter & Gamble (P&G) is a world-class consumer packaged goods company that manufactures and markets consumer products for everyday use. P&G offers 300 brands in 160 countries. Headquarters are based in the United States, with a worldwide presence in 81 countries.

Accounts Payable Transactional Outsourcing

In 1999, P&G reorganized to form its Global Business Services unit, establishing one of the world's leading shared services organizations. Having already moved most of its Finance and Accounting (F&A) transactional processes to the shared services center, the company was looking to outsource transactional accounts payable in regions across the globe.

Recently, P&G was looking to identify a capable partner to help improve service levels, reduce cost of operations, and provide a rewarding work environment for transitioned employees. At the same time, P&G wanted to ensure continuity of its accounts payable operations and minimize exposure to external risk factors.

• Focus on core competence
  P&G wanted to leverage the capabilities of a vendor with proven F&A experience as a core capability. This would allow HP to:
  • Use its capabilities and best practices to sustain world-class service levels
  • Improve the operation productivity while allowing P&G to focus on its core competencies
     

• Achieve highest standards in accuracy
  In light of the new Sarbanes-Oxley regulations, P&G wanted to help ensure that the highest levels of F&A accuracy and reporting were achieved.

• Assure business continuity
  P&G's entire accounts payable operation was being handled at its shared services center. The company wanted to minimize exposure to any external risk factors by selecting a partner that had a robust business continuity plan.

• Reduce operating expense
  With the global spread of its customers, P&G incurred high recurring costs in running global business process transactions such as vendor payables in multiple languages and currencies. At the same time, a fiercely competitive environment and razor-thin margins in the consumer goods industry prompted the company to further reduce the cost of operations.

P&G chose to transition a portion of its corporate-wide transactional accounts payable operation to HP Services. A detailed assessment of HP's Global Delivery Centers confirmed that HP was a strategic fit.

After a rigorous search, P&G decided to take advantage of HP's globally rationalized finance and administration operations, which were capable of fulfilling the company's need of processing 4 million invoices annually.

The Accounts Payable Transactional Outsourcing solution from HP offers P&G:

• Detailed and thorough transition methodology - from planning to execution
• Multiple language and multiple currency operations
• Strategically positioned HP Global Business Centers
• Proven innovative technology that enables work flow, imaging, and security
• Focus on quality, including Six Sigma methodology
• Proven experience in managing very large shared services organization internally

The partnership has strengthened as a result of the excellent cultural compatibility between P&G and HP, complemented by HP's customer-centric focus and innovative service leadership.

The ongoing outsourcing partnership between HP and PG is expected to deliver:

• Significant contracted operating savings over the next nine years
• Improved service levels and productivity across transactional accounts payables operations
• Guaranteed access to best-in-breed finance and administration operations and technology
• Scalability
• Follow-the-sun capability