How Experian Has Managed to Create a Top 20 GBS Amidst a Global Pandemic

Ahead of their participation in upcoming SSON events, we sat down with Helen Emmett, – CFO Global Finance Services at Experian to discuss her work. In particular, we took a deep dive into the role FP&A played in strengthening their value offering as a GBS.

Experian is the world’s leading global information services company, founded on the belief that data is central to how we all live, with the potential to transform all our lives for the better. The company helps individuals to take financial control and access financial services, businesses to make smarter decisions and thrive, lenders to lend more responsibly, and organisations to prevent identity fraud and crime.

In 2021, Experian was named a Top 20 Most Admired SSO & GBS by SSON Analytics. Since receiving acknowledgment for their exceptional work in both the customer experience and financial services, Experian’s investment in data and analytics has allowed GFS to continue building for the present and future.

When the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, Experian found itself assisting users and financial institutions with a wide array of challenges. With the help of innovative technologies, and scaling its innovations in digital finance with powerful and cutting-edge business platforms, Experian quickly responded to those challenges by helping those communities that were hit the hardest.

As part of these efforts, the GFS team has been working to deliver global finance leading services to the organization by providing quality service, reporting and insight.

The team is comprised of employees across Bulgaria, Malaysia, Costa Rica, UK, US and Columbia. 55% of Experian’s finance teams reside within the organization and cover everything from Transactional Processing (AP, AR, GL) to FP&A, finance controllership, finance business partnering and revenue accounting.

The success of Experian’s GFS team didn’t just extend to customers and clients, but also internal users and employees. Experian believes that how its people work is as important as what they do. The company prizes a collaborative, creative culture, where employees are encouraged, motivated and given the tools they need to succeed.

One part of what has made Experian one of the most admired GBS in the world is how Experian’s GFS team delivered FP&A to shared services to ensure financial decisions were aligned across the business.

For example, the program “EmPower” began in Experian’s GFS over six years ago. During the pandemic, one team member worked on a Green Belt Project to Drive the Governance of their Digital Onboarding product to remove reliance on manual input and improve reporting and control to reduce errors in revenue and inconsistency in client service. Because Experian knows data and digital finance so well, it is expert at developing analytical tools and processes that can better help businesses make use of data to design better services. This effort was so successful in GFS that Experian implemented it into other areas of the business.

Helen Emmett, Head of GFS for Experian, shared insight into what the first steps are for preparing FP&A for the GBS model.

“The first thing is being very clear as to what does FP&A mean and which activities you are moving,” Emmett said. “Being specific and having clear guardrails helps prevent scope creep and enables you to build backup and support. Start with the more transactional elements of the processes as this allows you to create process notes and SOPs while team members build knowledge and experience.”

Emmett added that Experian created a universal expectation that the FP&A team would require support and recruited at a higher level to best show the quality and benefits the team provides.

“We have been very clear that the teams in our GFS are an extension of the onshore teams and are treated as such,” Emmett said. “It’s important to build that trust and confidence and maintain quality of delivery. Ensure you engage your onshore partners in the recruitment and onboarding processes which gives them a vested interest in the success.”

Experian’s FP&A has had success in the GBS model due to the preparation put in across GFS.

If you are interested in learning more about how Experian implemented FP&A into their GBS Model, be sure to attend the Finance Transformation Digital event from August 2-4.

The Global Finance team wasn’t the only unit of Experian that had to adapt over the last two years. Experian, in total, is made up of 20,600 people operating across 43 countries focused on implementing new technologies and initiatives to help clients. One arm of Experian that was also altered during the pandemic is their GBS model, and it went beyond just implementing FP&A.

As many GBS practitioners are aware, end-to-end (E2E) process transformation has become a top priority for shared services, and that is no different for Experian.

Experian has utilized Global Process Owners (GPOs) to strengthen business operations by leading the flip from managing a process owner team to owning the whole process. By implementing GPOs, Experian has successfully navigated the last two years of unpredictable circumstances and delivered globalized E2E processes.

At Experian, GBS has created “squads” for key end to end processes that consist of a GPO, Operations Leader, Process SMEs, Black belt and Controls expert together with IT. The “squads” work together to build out roadmaps for these key processes that ensure all regions follow the same process to the best of their ability and work from the assumption that all processes are the same and then looking at expectations rather than vice-versa.

Experian is a purpose-led organisation, believing that data combined with innovations in business and financial operations have the potential to transform lives and societies, helping to create a better tomorrow for everyone. According to Emmett, this model has “enabled Experian to prioritize projects, as like everyone we have limited resources. From an operational perspective we are bringing processes under 1 global leader.”

Another tool utilized by Experian’s GFS is SSON Analytics. By utilizing SSON Analytics’ services, Experian has measured how they benchmark against other high performing organizations to provide targets for improvement. The insight provided by SSON Analytics has helped GFS understand where their focus and priorities should lie as they bring non-traditional shared services activities into GFS.

SSON Analytics’ Top 20 Most Admired SSOs &GBS is an annual benchmarking study that celebrates the success of Shared Service and GBS professionals across a business year. Click here to learn more about SSON Analytics Top 20.