Amway sells consumer products in more than 100 countries andterritories, and until recently its accounts payable (A/P)processes were highly decentralized. The finance function wasmaking progress in consolidating global workflows, but paymentscontinued to be handled in the business units. In total, divisionsaround the world used more than 100 different banks. They processedpayments with different technologies, controls, and approvalprocesses.

“Each country had its own individual finance team, with its ownway of doing things,” explains Jeff May, former supervisor forglobal treasury at Amway. “That put us in a difficult position asfar as visibility to cash flows. Corporate treasury relied on thebusiness units to provide information about their payments byfilling out a spreadsheet and emailing it to us once a month. Ifsomeone was out sick, we might not get the data—and when we did getthe data, it didn't always match what we saw in the general ledger[G/L].”