The challenge

The Jacobs merger presented an opportunity for Worley to standardise its global processes and controls with respect to consolidating its global cards programme with a single card provider. Worley had already taken significant strides toward standardising and consolidating its card programmes with a single provider in at least ten countries. As part of the merger, the company wanted to expand the programme to include the newly merged arm within a rapid timeframe of eight weeks, due to contractual changes with the incumbent provider, and to meet merger milestones. This included ensuring that employees were in receipt of new cards by the time of the migration deadline to avoid the risk of unclaimed or incorrect expenses from lack of reconciliation.

The solution

Working closely with its global card provider and HSBC, Worley created a combined project team which ensured a successful onboarding through centralised decision-making and management of tasks.

The company also coordinated resources in each country, linking back to the central project team and held regular workshops. This enabled it to establish a unified approach, resolve issues relating to the integration and transition by identifying potential risks and required documentation as well as defining a post-implementation service model.

Leveraging Worley’s existing infrastructure and transitional systems inherited from the merger, it rolled out 5,000 cards across the US, Canada, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Oman, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Belgium, Australia, India and Singapore within the eight-week timeframe.

The company also created a bespoke expense management system to integrate new employee cards during the merger.

Worley introduced programme customisation such as merchant categories control to provide flexibility and improve regulation over its expenses.

“We rolled out standard processes to each operating market for global reporting, enabling greater transparency and ease of expense tracking,” explains Craig Busch, Group Treasurer.

Best practice and innovation

With the successful consolidation of its solution, including full centralisation of cards management in a single expense management system as well as robust and consistent global reporting, Worley achieved greater control over its acquired global business expenses.

The card programme is supported by consistent platforms and an integrated service model. The consolidation along with instant notification of transactions has enhanced cash management benefits as well. The global cards rebate programme also delivered cost savings, which helps with cost management on a global basis.

The solution’s scalability meets Worley’s future business demands in new markets. The same expense management programme can expand into purchasing cards and virtual cards for larger ticket items, translating into bigger savings long term.

Key benefits

• Number of cards successfully migrated – over 5,000 in over ten countries.
• Number of countries now with a single provider card programme – over 15.
• Number of cards issuers consolidated – from three to one.

The merger undertaken by Worley was one of the largest and most complex transactions in Australia for 2019. With time pressures, geographical spread, significant number of employee movements and transactional banking and liquidity challenges, the scale of the integration and migration of all accounts, transactions and cards leads this to be an enormous success.

This accomplishment can be attributed to the close working relationship between Worley and its international banking partner along with dedicated staff, collaboration of teams across various functions and support by senior management from both organisations. All stakeholders were committed to the success of the outcomes, regardless of the challenges they faced. Putting in place robust banking systems and cards processes supported these efforts to ensure that transactions and cash flowed perfectly from day one post-merger.

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