Jotun’s transformation projects are “90% humans, 10% technology”

Best Payments Solution

Highly Commended Winner

Jotun

Photo of Hilary Norris Wilson, Ripple Treasury, Eranda Maldeniya, E-Analytics, Kjell Andreas Zeiler Nordrum, Jotun and Casper Borly, PwC.

Hamish Waddell

Global Finance Process Manager

Kjell Andreas Zeiler Nordrum

Treasury Manager

Norway

Jotun is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of paints and coatings, with 11,000 employees, 68 subsidiary companies in 49 countries, and commercial presence in more than 100 markets.

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The challenge

Jotun’s geographic footprint generates significant financial complexity. Jotun operates 56 distinct operating units, each with its own accounting function and back office, with no shared service centre.

The central treasury function, headquartered in Norway, has remained intentionally lean. The catalyst for this transformation was a bank integration model that was struggling to keep pace with growth.

Jotun had successfully consolidated global operations onto a single instance of IFS, its enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, but had not achieved the same consolidation on the banking side. The legacy treasury platform it relied on was on its last legs.

The deeper challenge was agility. Any change to a direct ERP-to-bank connection ran six months deep in the delivery queue, a pace incompatible with the complexity of Jotun’s operating markets.

The solution

Jotun was looking for a solution that best matched the way the company actually operates: a lean central treasury team supporting 56 decentralised operating units across dozens of markets.

As Hamish Waddell, Jotun’s Global Finance Process Manager, notes, “transformation projects like this are 90% humans, 10% technology. The right solution had to fit the organisation and allow the team to execute change at a realistic pace.”

Jotun selected Ripple Treasury as a unified cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution covering both treasury management and payment hub functionality. The decision to consolidate both capabilities into a single platform reflected the team’s capacity, as managing two vendors and two implementation tracks simultaneously was not viable. The core architecture is Ripple Treasury acting as a translation layer between Jotun’s single ERP instance and a banking network spanning 75 banking relationships and 368 accounts. Jotun sends the standard ERP payment instruction files to the platform, which then delivers a correctly formatted payment instruction file via a series of host-to-host bank connections. Implementation began with the treasury module, followed by a payments rollout across 56 operating units.

Best practice and innovation

The judges commended this as a very good case study and solution. Jotun opted for agility and simplicity. They picked a good treasury management system (TMS)/bank connectivity solution that has provided a high level of integration that is simple, easy and fast to configure and manage.

Jotun’s approach reflects a treasury function that has had to be architecturally deliberate because it could not be operationally large. Rather than building point-to-point connections or managing format compatibility at the ERP level, the translation layer model allows a lean central team to serve 56 decentralised operating units without scaling headcount.

The speed advantage this creates is more than incremental. A file format change that can take six months via the ERP delivery process takes two days through Ripple Treasury. For a company still rolling out bank integration to operating units that have never had it before, that responsiveness is what makes the programme manageable.

Key benefits

Process efficiencies.
Return on investment (ROI).
Risk mitigation.
Future-proof solution.
Improved visibility.
Increased automation.
Increased system connectivity.
Manual intervention reduced.

Payment files are routing reliably through the hub across four core global banks and several local connections. Local format requirements that would previously have required a lengthy ERP change process are handled within the platform in days.

Previous challenges are solved, like Chinese characters in domestic China payment files, UAE remittance advice email routing and field mapping workarounds for markets where the ERP structure doesn’t match local banking requirements.

Employee expense reimbursements, which were once processed outside the hub, are being converted to a supplier invoice model that will route approximately 80,000 payments per year through the payment hub alone.

Bank statement aggregation is the next milestone. With 75 banking relationships and 368 accounts, loading cash balances back to the ERP in a standardised format will give the group cash visibility it has never had.

That visibility, in turn, enables the roadmap items representing the largest business cases, including intercompany netting given the scale of USD flows between Jotun entities, and eventually payments on behalf of, following the path of other large Norwegian multinationals.

Eranda Maldeniya

Director, Enterprise Analytics

Congratulations to Jotun on this outstanding recognition at the Adam Smith Awards 2026. Enterprise Analytics is proud to have partnered with Jotun on the global implementation of the Ripple Treasury platform, seamlessly integrating it with your global IFS ERP landscape to create a modern, scalable treasury solution. Together, we helped strengthen payment connectivity, improve visibility and operational efficiency, and support greater standardisation across the global treasury operations of Jotun. This recognition reflects the strength of collaboration, innovation and a shared commitment to delivering meaningful business outcomes. We look forward to continuing our partnership as Jotun’s treasury transformation evolves.

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Casper Borley

Director, Financial Risk & Treasury, PwC

We are delighted that Ripple’s centralised payments solution for Jotun has been recognised as a Highly Commended Winner by the Treasury Today Group at the Adam Smith Awards – a great outcome that reflects the value of a clear transformation vision, strong execution and close collaboration across teams. Many thanks to Hamish Waddell and Kjell Andreas Zeiler Nordrum at Jotun, Justin Anderson at Ripple Treasury and Frank Nørring at PwC for your leadership, support and partnership throughout this journey.

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Hilary Norris Wilson

Head of Global Operations

Congratulations to Jotun on this well-deserved win. Jotun’s treasury team took on a complex challenge, unifying payment operations across 56 operating units in dozens of markets onto a single platform, all while staying lean and hands-on rather than scaling up headcount. Watching the team go from a six-month wait for a file format change to a two-day turnaround has been rewarding to be part of. Treasury Today Group’s Adam Smith Award recognition reflects the discipline Jotun brought to a transformation many organisations would have found overwhelming, and Ripple Treasury is proud to have been the platform behind it.

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The Adam Smith Awards are the industry benchmark for best practice and innovation in corporate treasury. The 2026 awards attracted 635 nominations. To find out more please visit treasurytoday.com/adam-smith-awards

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