Description:

The client is one among the top 10 ranking travel service providers based in US. Primary services offered to the customers are Online booking for Airlines, Hotels, Cars and Vacations. The company has been recording a rapid growth in its business. Its back office operations, however, experienced decentralization of financial management. The client faced many internal difficulties in managing the workflow processes and critical financial reporting. As most of the accounting and payroll functions were not directly related to the core business, the management decided to outsource its back office operations.

The Challenge:

The assignment's main challenge was managing the company's accounts receivable/payable. The receivable accounts required reconciling the daily authorized as well as the settled transaction for sales and ticket bookings (for hotels, cars, and vacations), verification and integration of all settled amounts with bank by preparing daily summary reports. The payable accounts needed invoice verification and payment processing for vendors and travel agents, preparing debit notes on chargeback transactions, reconciling refunds on duplicate/multiple bookings, paying off advertiser's bills for Marketing Campaigns and Audit. The project also required the payroll processing for the staffing services.

Solution/Process:

Decatrend formed an executive team of accountants to manage all the back office operations. To counter the challenge posed, the web-based delivery was integrated with workflow management tools. This ensured lower cost and equally skilled labor. An operational structure to provide dedicated and efficient staff during critical situations was instituted. All routine transaction processing that includes A/P, billing, collections and A/R were processed through the offsite-processing center and were made online. A custom-software was developed to handle all the client's operations and to generate reports and data formats according to client's specifications.

The outsourcing of back office functions has earned much significance as the initiative has allowed the client's CFO to design more strategies and focus on issues critical to the growth of the client's business.