DowDuPont fully automates cash application

Industry
Chemicals

Revenue
$62.5 bn

Employees
98,000

Headquarters
Wilmington, Delaware

Choosing the right solution partner for our cash application transformation was critical. Serrala’s strong knowledge of AR best practices and support along the way made achieving success much easier for us – and meant we were able to implement and see results much faster

David Brasseur
Finance Manager
68%
cash application automation achieved
Reduced
unapplied cash

DowDuPont is a global materials science, agriscience, and speciality products company with over 300 years combined history of innovation. 

DowDuPont – an innovator requires innovative cash application approaches 

Following its creation in a “merger of equals” between Dow and Du Pont, the new corporation faced challenges in cash application caused by its reliance on multiple outdated SAP systems. This challenge was exacerbated by growing rates of electronic payments with decoupled remittance advices and poor oversight of global AR and cash application processes. 

To address these issues, DowDuPont planned to migrate to a more modern SAP ERP to future proof the business and facilitate full global oversight of payment processing. They also sought to automate cash application and matching as far as possible to eliminate unapplied cash, make faster investments, and improve usability for finance teams. 

Key facts: 

  •  61,000 incoming payments per month 
  • Managed by 4 shared service centres in NA, SA, India, and China 
  • Poor oversight of processing and inefficient cash application process 

DowDuPont’s transformation approach 

When Dow and DuPont merged in 2017, the company created 3 separate SAP instances for its 3 subsidiary companies with a view to rolling up all AR data into their holding company. This required a step-change in the way the business had previously handled AR, requiring a high degree of automation to eliminate manual steps, enforce compliance checks, eliminate effort from the process, and standardize across all enterprise systems. 

They chose to partner with Serrala for this transformation both to further centralize operations in their SAP investment, to transfer control to individual business units, and to ensure globalized, flexible standards for all cash application processes that allow for high degrees of automation, visibility, and control. 

The results – high degrees of automation, significantly improved workflows, intuitive new user interface 

As part of their initial transformation, DowDuPont was able to achieve cash application automation rates of 68% – and that’s only set to rise as time goes on. In addition, remittance advices from all channels and in all formats are now automatically captured and assigned to their corresponding payments, making matching much simpler, reducing unapplied cash and allowing for instant reporting and querying based on real-time and historical data. 

Beyond this, our solution’s sleek and intuitive user interface significantly improves experience for finance teams, allowing them to easily view and manage all approvals, alerts, and actions as automatically queued by the system for human intervention. 

Business Need

DowDuPont is a global materials science, agriscience, and speciality products company with over 300 years combined history of innovation. 

DowDuPont – an innovator requires innovative cash application approaches 

Following its creation in a “merger of equals” between Dow and Du Pont, the new corporation faced challenges in cash application caused by its reliance on multiple outdated SAP systems. This challenge was exacerbated by growing rates of electronic payments with decoupled remittance advices and poor oversight of global AR and cash application processes. 

To address these issues, DowDuPont planned to migrate to a more modern SAP ERP to future proof the business and facilitate full global oversight of payment processing. They also sought to automate cash application and matching as far as possible to eliminate unapplied cash, make faster investments, and improve usability for finance teams. 

Key facts: 

  •  61,000 incoming payments per month 
  • Managed by 4 shared service centres in NA, SA, India, and China 
  • Poor oversight of processing and inefficient cash application process 

Solution Implemented

DowDuPont’s transformation approach 

When Dow and DuPont merged in 2017, the company created 3 separate SAP instances for its 3 subsidiary companies with a view to rolling up all AR data into their holding company. This required a step-change in the way the business had previously handled AR, requiring a high degree of automation to eliminate manual steps, enforce compliance checks, eliminate effort from the process, and standardize across all enterprise systems. 

They chose to partner with Serrala for this transformation both to further centralize operations in their SAP investment, to transfer control to individual business units, and to ensure globalized, flexible standards for all cash application processes that allow for high degrees of automation, visibility, and control. 

Results Achieved

The results – high degrees of automation, significantly improved workflows, intuitive new user interface 

As part of their initial transformation, DowDuPont was able to achieve cash application automation rates of 68% – and that’s only set to rise as time goes on. In addition, remittance advices from all channels and in all formats are now automatically captured and assigned to their corresponding payments, making matching much simpler, reducing unapplied cash and allowing for instant reporting and querying based on real-time and historical data. 

Beyond this, our solution’s sleek and intuitive user interface significantly improves experience for finance teams, allowing them to easily view and manage all approvals, alerts, and actions as automatically queued by the system for human intervention. 

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