For P&G Global Business Services (GBS), globally managing strategic and non-strategic transactions presented many challenges. The P&G ProCard Team has balanced the costs, efforts and controls associated with processing incidental expenses and identified that using the ProCard for purchases under $2,500 delivers the best value for the company.

Strategically sourced, high volume purchases were complex, requiring numerous purchase orders (PO) that required manual creation and maintenance. P&G therefore recognised the need for more global capability to expand effectively its existing ProCard programme, which would further eliminate paper cheques, ACH and wire payments and minimise the complexity of the accounting process related to purchases. The P&G ProCard Team led the implementation of the global expansion, which provided a more effective means for securing incidental goods or services with a low-dollar, high-transactional-volume characteristic. It would also bring greater efficiency to strategically sourced goods. Using Citi’s online portal, P&G would be guaranteed that every time a purchase was made, it would be logged, tracked, and available globally across all company systems.

Amongst the key objectives of the programme was gaining the ability to consolidate all supplier spend data across all 18 markets to leverage economies of scale. The P&G ProCard Team looked to establish a global VAT processing partner to ensure reclaims were either fully automated or processed efficiently by a third-party provider.

“It is an honour and pleasure to receive the prestigious Adam Smith Award for P&G’s advancements in the Procurement Card arena.”

As Melissa Risley explains, “Since the P&G ProCard Team implemented the innovative Citi ProCard purchasing card solution, we have seen significant benefits, not least of which include a dramatic improvement in efficiency and cost savings. The global nature of the solution and the breadth of automation it brings to the organisation have led to an expansion from four countries to 18 in less than two years – a phenomenal rate of growth for such a large company.”

Tatiana Tchinova comments, “P&G has been able to realise hard-dollar savings through programme rebates, as well as soft-dollar savings through a reduction in PO processing. The automation and savings have yielded a compelling financial success story for P&G.”

The Citi ProCard solution is truly unique for several important reasons. The solution:

• Is highly dynamic, applying accounting stream details on more than one specific criteria point on the data flows. The result is a highly automated process that delivers 80-85% straight through processing for hundreds of thousands of transactions.
• Provides a convenient electronic application submission and approval process for new applicants.
• Enables automation of VAT reclamation.
• Means that multiple suppliers can be used on a single card.
• Brings together a market leading partnership between P&G and Citi, allowing a highly effective central supplier on-boarding strategy.
• Delivers the ability to capture transactions data centrally across 90+ markets.
• Provides unprecedented Level three data across ALL markets in EMEA and selected CEMEA territories.
• Features a central team with representatives from each region, creating the global P&G ProCard Team, who determine the overall requirements of the programme. This best practice streamlined the approval process and helped in coordinating the implementation across regions.

Melissa Risley concludes, “For P&G, the ProCard solution has been a real game changer.”