Overcoming the obstacles to automation: V-Guard's story | Part 2

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In part 1 of our two-part V-Guard blog series, we explored how the iconic brand accomplished its transformation with Happay after nearly four decades of traditional book-keeping operations.

When Happay started off at V- Guard, its operations took a quick leap and saw appealing results. However, like with any change introduced into a comfortable environment, a few challenges were inevitable.

V-guard was reasonably concerned about the intangible challenges and circumstantial difficulties that had to be overcome, to successfully automate its expense management process. In this second part of our V-Guard blog, we detail how we overcame these challenges and supported the company on its journey of automation.

The challenges

V-Guard, as a large family-owned business, had its own unique set of challenges while implementing Happay:
• Trust: A family-owned business like V-Guard often extends fraternal bonds to its vendors as well, who have mostly worked with them over years. However, Happay was a new name to V-Guard. Understandably, the company was apprehensive about entrusting a completely new vendor with implementing a solution to modernise its legacy process.
• Implementation: One of the primary implementation challenges was that of adapting the solution to the technical and non-technical aspects of the business. The solution had to integrate seamlessly with all existing software and ERP systems to facilitate smooth migration of all information as required. All this had to be done keeping employee comfort and care in mind, making it central to any operational changes within the company.
• Security: It goes without saying that given the size and maturity of the company, the volume of data – and its sensitivity – was immense. Thus, security of data was of paramount importance.
• Scalability: Another concern was scalability. With the rapid pace of V-Guard’s growth, the company needed a solution that would not just scale responsively, but also ensure anytime, anywhere accessibility.

The Rollout

“I have been with V-Guard for over 25 years. I joined as an accounts clerk and used to oversee a lot of paperwork for our employees. Expense management is one of the key requirements of this organisation. Happay has simplified this process for us now“– Jaishankar N, AGM, Finance

Happay developed a customisable solution for V-Guard by configuring employee grades, cities and even city types. Policies were then framed catering to the company’s managerial hierarchy. The final solution was integrated with the firm’s accounting software, which also enabled V-Guard to migrate to a file-based format of recording transactions.

Given the primary concerns raised by the V-Guard team, Happay was initially introduced and asked to cater to a pilot of 135 users to analyse the impact on operational efficiency. However, the dedication of Happay and all the other parties involved towards slowly integrating our solution into the company’s operations helped us gain trust, and we were soon introduced to the northern, central and eastern parts of the country.

Following three rounds of one-on-one training and grievance redressal, Happay was launched at V-Guard for a total of 600 users. Today, in just about two years, V-Guard has approximately 1,500 users who swear by Happay’s corporate expense management system.

The Benefits

With Happay in place, V-Guard was able to significantly reduce the problems identified in
part 1 of the blog:
• Geographically distributed Workforce: Happay mapped each executive to a designated manager and a finance representative, making it easier for managers to collate expenses team-wise.
• Manual Filing & Follow-ups: Employees were also given process visibility – they could now easily locate the precise level at which an expense verification was stuck, which let them know who to get in touch with for an update.
• Policy Violation: Limits were set for each employee, helping V-Guard monitor and control expenses in line with its corporate policy.
• Control over Cash Disbursed: Following the automation of the whole system, managers could transfer funds from the corporate pool account into employees’ Happay accounts – in real time – paving the way for faster and more efficient operations.
• Clear expense Visibility: No expense at V-Guard is now categorised ambiguously. Once an employee uses a Happay card for any expense, all related data is immediately and automatically captured in the system, facilitating utmost transparency and visibility.

The Bottom Line

“It no longer is a cumbersome process for employees to request for money. A sales manager seated in Delhi can now easily seek an approval from his/her manager in Kochi through the Happay app. This has helped reduce many working hours and increased efficiency.”
-Diane Tito, HR Officer

The results of V-Guard’s process transformation aimed at corporate expense automation can be summarised as follows:
• Increased control over corporate expenses
• Enhanced regulatory compliance
• End to end automation, making for massively reduced claim cycle time
• Instantaneous fund transfers
• Complete digitisation, security & scalability

The total overhead costs of the business saw reduction and also established an easy process which translated to be the backbone of the organization, today. The process for claiming reimbursements initially placed at 45 days, was brought down to a remarkable duration of 5 days with Happay!

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