A Tale of Two Companies: Amway & Trek

Gaining visibility and control over payments has long been a challenge for global treasury teams, that’s why when companies excel in their payments programs industry leaders take notice.

In late May, both Amway and Trek Bicycles were recognized for the payments innovation with Amway winning the 2019 Silver Alexander Hamilton Award in Working Capital & Payments and industry publications profiling both companies’ programs.

Read on to learn how Amway and Trek Bicycles overhauled their payments programs, enabling them to improve cash visibility and protect and mobilize their cash.

Amway’s Journey to Centralized Payments

Amway, a multinational company that sells health, beauty and home care products, knew that they needed to streamline their highly decentralized A/P processes and complex payments program in which payments were handled in the business units. The company was processing payments with different technologies, controls and approval processes and was using more than 100 banks.

To remedy this, the treasury team set its sights on implementing a standardized global payments process and payment with direct connectivity to its banks. In doing so, they rolled out Kyriba as their TMS and to help overhaul payments.

Today, Amway’s ERP system automatically send payment files to one of four regional shared service center’s payment hub. The Kyriba payment module then determines the appropriate formatting for each bank’s payment file and preferred method of connectivity. Once payment files are reviewed and released, they are then automatically transmitted to the bank via the payment hub.

“For the vast majority of our payments around the world, we’ve eliminated a lot of unnecessary steps that used to waste time and cause payment delays in our legacy environment.”

– Jeff May, Former Supervisor, Global Treasury at Amway

Not only did Amway’s treasury transformation standardize controls and enhance visibility into payments, but it also led to a 50 percent reduction in payment banks and has saved the team more than 600 hours a month. Their exceptional journey and commitment to rolling out payment hubs, rationalizing bank relationships and increasing cash visibility won Amway’s treasury team the 2019 Silver Alexander Hamilton Award in Working Capital & Payments.

Read the full Treasury & Risk article, “Centralizing Payments Across 100 Markets Around the World” >

How Kyriba Helped Trek Bicycles Mitigate Payment Fraud

A bicycle manufacturer and distributor, Trek Bicycles was rapidly growing and their four-person treasury team was responsible for managing global cash, currency, banking, debt, hedging and insurance. With the continued scaling of the company, the treasury team had been experiencing an increase in fraud attempts and wanted to enhance the treasury function to combat this.

To help standardize and automate processes while also reducing the amount of trapped cash and mitigating fraud, the company employed Kyriba as their TMS. In doing so, they were able to identify previously unknown fraud and security vulnerabilities, including the fact that some payments were not secure.

To resolve those issues, Trek decided to utilize Kyriba’s payment fraud module to focus on security, simplifying their banking structure, automating processes and identifying opportunities to increase efficiency.

“By standardizing our processes, simplifying our banking structures and removing unnecessary access to bank accounts, we could quickly improve the situation.”

– Jennfier Tomaloff, International Treasury Manager at Trek Bicycle Corporation

The outcome of treasury’s initiative to mitigate payment fraud was significant. With Kyriba, Trek was able to reduce the number of bank portals through which payments were flowing from 27 to three, decrease the number of individuals releasing payments from 60 to 10, standardize payment processes and utilize Kyriba’ fraud module review to help mitigate payment fraud.

Read the full Global Treasurer article, “How Trek Bicycles Enhanced Its Global Operations While Mitigating Payment Fraud” >

To learn how payment hubs can help your company increase efficiency, reduce costs and enhance fraud protection, read Kyriba’s 15-Minute Guide to Payment Hubs.

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