EY Global Services

Highlights

• Prepared the EY global organization’s customers for EU regulations and mandates.
• Simplified end-to-end technical solutions and reduced implementation timelines.
• Reduced manual work across Finance and Client teams to focus on “value add” activities.

The Challenge

Ernst & Young (EY) is a global professional services organization that exists to build a better working world, helping create longterm value for clients, people, and society, while building trust in the capital markets. Working across assurance, consulting, law, strategy, tax and transactions, the EY global organization provides exceptional client service from 700+ offices across 150+ countries.

EY Global Services is responsible for the technology used by its Member Firms to support their front- and back-office business processes, including a global ERP system (SAP) which supports billing. During the multi-year deployment of this ERP system, e-invoicing requirements were treated on a case-by-case basis leaving the EY global organization supporting multiple local technologies.

With an expected 125B invoices to be sent electronically in 2024, an increasing number of local tax authorities mandating that invoices must be cleared prior to being sent to the EY global organization’s clients, as well as client desire for electronic services, the EY global organization needed to find a way to maintain their global solution while meeting local requirements in a rapidly maturing marketplace.

The Solution

The EY global organization sought a collaborator who understood both SAP and the intricacies of global e-invoicing. Not only did Billtrust have a unified approach that would consolidate the data inputs for all their Member Firms across countries, but they also had unparalleled global interoperability knowledge. Billtrust offered support for a wide array of invoice delivery methods, including email, print/post, portal presentment, accounts payable (AP) portal delivery and PEPPOL connectivity, as well as connectivity with invoice clearance and reporting platforms. Regardless of the country, implementation was seamless thanks to Billtrust’s ability to translate a “best practice” data file and deliver it to any government portal or e-Delivery Network such as Ariba or Tungsten.

The Results

To deliver solutions to the EMEIA (Europe, Middle East, India, and Africa) region, Billtrust and the EY global organization created a joint implementation team which drew upon each of their strengths. The EY global organization consulted with country stakeholders to capture requirements and then worked with Billtrust to determine if any functional or technical gaps would be met by the Billtrust platform or the EY global organization’s ERP system.

A joint team of project managers then agreed on a plan and key dependencies before commencing a traditional waterfall development and test cycle with Billtrust using its strong collaboration with e-delivery networks such as Ariba, PEPPOL and Tungsten to support technical design queries, end-to-end testing, and the EY global organization’s client onboarding. Next, the team worked with a country to coordinate User Acceptance Testing (UAT) and work on business readiness activities to support the country going-live. Finally, the collaborative team transitioned the country into production support including a hyper-care phase.

As the current electronic invoicing market value stands at $8.9 billion and is projected to ascend to approximately $23.7 billion by 2028, it is more important than ever for the EY global organization to be prepared. This joint delivery approach has not only helped prepare the EY global organization for upcoming EU e-billing regulations but has helped improve the overall employee and customer experience in streamlining processes and eliminating manual work.

Where many providers and countries struggle to stay current with the many rules and regulations, we always feel we are on top of our invoicing processes through our Billtrust partnership.

Matthew Samme, Partner/Principal, EY Global Services