“The beauty of CaseWare Analytic tools is that it can be used by various people and departments – Finance, Internal audit and C-level. It provides true assurance.” Mr. Jayant S. Mavlankar, CIA, CISA, Deputy President, Group Assurance
Company Profile
Established over 3 decades ago, the Kalpataru Group has an asset base of over $200 million, annual turnover of $250 million and is home to over 2,000 employees. This pioneering conglomerate has interests in real estate development, property and project management, engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contracting for power transmission and infrastructure projects including road projects, warehousing and logistics.
Known for its vision and values of quality, prudence and respect, the Kalpataru Group is traded on the Indian Stock Exchange and is one of the country’s best run companies.
Challenges
As a corporate giant, with the most modern accounts payables and purchasing systems, Kalpataru’s internal audit team wanted to ensure that they had strong internal controls within their purchasing processes – especially in the areas of purchase orders, requisitions and vendor master data.
Always looking for ways to increase profits and extend efficiencies, the purchasing and audit teams needed to make sure that no erroneous payments were being made, that regulatory compliance was being fulfilled and vendors were providing the best payment terms possible. Also, they wanted to ensure that accounts’ housekeeping was top of class.
The Kalpataru team had reporting tools in place that consisted of spreadsheets and ERP reports, but felt more robust data analysis and monitoring technology could further improve operations, and in a timelier manner.
The Group needed a scalable solution to monitor all purchases within their SAP environment, across numerous companies within their holdings.
Solution
The Kalpataru Group team chose CaseWare IDEA® for data analysis and CaseWare™ Monitor (now Alessa) or continuous monitoring to realize full profit potential and gain further efficiencies. The CaseWare solution was more user-friendly and easier to implement than the other options evaluated.
Through an automated process, 120 data analysis scripts are continuously monitoring all purchasing activities and providing value everyday across three companies within the group. Any anomalies detected are automatically sent to frontline personnel in the finance and purchasing departments, to action immediately.
The solution is used to identify:
Purchase orders that have been split to bypass limits
Purchase order inconsistencies across rates, periods or items
Vendors that can offer better payment terms – by examining purchase orders with different payment terms (30 vs. 60 day)
Suppliers who have not met delivery schedule – by comparing the P.O. to the goods received
Activities for improving regulatory tax requirements
Within a single user portal, the audit team is able to have an ongoing evaluation of their control environment to see trends and gain insight on whether the controls are working or deteriorating. The purchasing department is able to remediate control breakdowns in a very timely manner, helping to protect and increase revenues.
The Kalpataru Group is currently looking to expand their CaseWare analytics usage to continuously monitor their sales, billing and finance systems.
Results
Independently monitor 100% of purchasing and vendor-related activities
Identify control breakdowns and root causes to improve purchasing sub-processes
Improved accuracy of vendor master data
Sufficiently execute its Governance Framework