Global business services models for F&A operations
  • Case study

Elevating global business services for KONE

How Genpact helped KONE overhaul shared services to support new strategic goals

Who we worked with

KONE, a global leader in the elevator and escalator industry, whose mission is to improve the flow of urban life.

What the company needed

To better align finance and accounting (F&A) to KONE's business goals under a new and improved leadership team, the company needed to automate, harmonize, and standardize operations to:

  • Connect end-to-end processes across the business
  • Simplify service management so business units do not miss out on opportunities
  • Merge retained/outsourced shared services into a robust hybrid business services component
  • Strengthen partner relationship management to drive optimum value from KONE's partner ecosystem

How we helped

Genpact joined forces with KONE to:

  • Design a regionally focused global business service operating model to better serve its business units, employees, and customers
  • Embed benchmarking into KONE's business operations and team structures to amplify visibility on success parameters
  • Improve economies of scale and drive continuous improvement in productivity

What the company got

An award-winning, scalable business process platform – KONE business services (KBS) – that runs F&A operations through a collaborative hybrid operating model to:

  • Create a competitive advantage for KONE
  • Strengthen local accountability while improving efficiency and profitability as the company scales across the globe
  • Deliver best-in-class record to report (R2R), sell to cash (S2C), and source to pay (S2P) services, powered by automation
  • Drive operational stability by harmonizing F&A processes

Challenge

Reimagine shared services to conquer strategic goals and provide value-driven solutions

KONE had already been on a long journey toward shared services transformation and was ready to transition to a global business services operating model. Under its new leadership, KONE renewed its strategic goals of driving superior experience for its employees and customers while thriving in today's volatile business environment. It was time to move away from focusing on transactional efficiency to allowing business needs and customer requirements to drive decisions. To fix the disconnection across end-to-end business processes, KONE worked with Genpact to help deliver this outcomes-focused F&A overhaul.

Our F&A experts and KONE worked together to identify what needed to change. A decentralized operating model, inconsistent scopes, different regional business requirements, a lack of visibility into processes, and unclear ownership of roles were undermining how well-shared services could support KONE's goals of ease, efficiency, and high-quality experiences.

Solution

A one-stop F&A shop built on tighter collaboration and end-to-end process ownership

We knew we needed a new approach for shared services. After an initial consultation phase, we reorganized our delivery team to align with KONE's expectations and priorities. Working together, we brought in nearly 50 stakeholders to develop a clear vision for KBS. Armed with these insights, we designed a new operating model and realigned processes, roles, and ways of working – all built on a strong foundation of data, technology, and analytics.

“In our industry, the more efficiently we do business today, the bigger our competitive edge. Genpact helps us achieve this by driving towards ambitious shared targets, such as our rigorous focus on building centers of excellence that have become best practice across all business services. And the fun part? Building 'one team' to make it all happen."
Jan Nikus Vice President, KONE Business Services

Together, we built a team of strategists and process experts to speed up the go-live date to better support the company's business units. We helped KONE establish four centers of competence – quality, data and automation, project management, and people and communication – to help standardize best practices across all F&A operations. These centers also helped the company define what success looks like for KONE.

We also established a center of excellence to accelerate KONE's automation journey to build reliable operations, drive harmonization, improve end-to-end metrics, and automate three key processes: R2R, S2C, and S2P.

The scale of these changes meant changing mindsets as well as processes. So we shared a steady stream of early and visible successes to help bring stakeholders along.

Impact

Toward ease, efficiency, and better experiences

At the heart of KONE's transformation lies a committed leadership team supported by a strong partnership with Genpact. With an end-to-end focus on processes, governance, and captive and outsourced shared services joining forces, it now has a one-stop shop for F&A operations, ensuring seamless integration with KONE's core businesses. Automation and standardization have freed up approximately 40% of full-time employees for more customer-focused tasks and improved the employee and supplier experience. Thanks to a more resilient operating model, the company's balance sheet is more stable, meaning it can make faster, more accurate business decisions to drive harmonization and bottom-line impact.

And key metrics like paid on time, invoicing efficiency, queries per invoice, and unallocated cash have improved.

“Our partnership with KONE is a great example of how to build next-gen business services and lean processes. It's a partnership based on shared values and a desire to innovate and place experience at the heart of business transformation."
Irene Lundström Client Partner, Manufacturing, Genpact

Today, our collaboration is getting noticed beyond the walls of KONE. The company won a Shared Services Outsourcing Network award for business transformation. What's next? Together, we're exploring the opportunities from AI-powered solutions to bring even greater resilience and ability to finance, making it truly fit for the future.

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