WNS boxes clever with a one-two punch of finance data and talent

Finance leaders face rapid changes and unpredictability in everything from macroeconomic headwinds to changing end-consumer expectations. They need real-time and accurate insights to keep pace with the changing operating environment. Business operations and analytics service provider WNS aims to solve this through its Financial Intelligence-in-a-Box (FIAB) suite, integrating data and analytics with finance and accounting (F&A) domain knowledge and finance talent.

In a recent study, a director of revenue accounting of an IT services company shared, “We live in such a world right now where there is so much change and unpredictability with Forex, business, and technology—changes in the way customers pay for services and how we sell services. The ability to develop the most current forecast, come up with an all-new set of variables, produce different scenarios, and do it real-time as data is available, is key.”

Exhibit 1 shows the director is not alone in recognizing the need for better data and relevant talent.

Exhibit 1: F&A leaders know they need to make better use of data and analytics and access the right talent

Sample: 207 F&A executives across Global 2000 enterprises
Source: HFS Research, 2023

Artificial intelligence and machine learning unlock data’s value

WNS’ FIAB is a suite of analytics-based techniques and applications integrated with artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and natural language processing (NLP). It uses techniques such as econometric modeling, text analytics, fuzzy matching algorithms, advanced time series, and predictive models to eliminate the possibility of potential fraud, optimize resource use, eliminate duplicates, and run scenarios from past data to detect hidden trends for meaningful insights from data.

WNS also supports the suite with a pool of finance specialists, including chartered accountants, finance and decision science PhDs, and mathematicians, who work closely with CFOs across geographies to understand their day-to-day operations and strategic imperatives to implement appropriate solutions for finance functions.

For a leading services company with a substantial volume of manual journal processes, WNS applied its proprietary journal entry analytics solution (part of FIAB) in its F&A process. The big data analytics solution analyzed 5.7+ million journal entry lines utilizing advanced statistical models to identify various improvement opportunities. It resulted in the consolidation and elimination of journals by identifying low-value journals, re-prioritizing journal timelines, and identifying journal anomalies. This led to a reduction of about 30% to 35% in legal entities and an enhanced controllership experience.

WNS is turning two of its key assets—domain expertise and talent—into relevant IP

WNS developed these FIAB modules, which include statistical methods aligning CFO requirements; they provide simple and relevant information in a systematic and structured manner and a view of the organizational performance and growth:

• Journal Entry Analytics Platform (JEAP) is a record-to-report analytics solution developed by WNS to enhance controllership, highlighting risks and abnormalities in the underlying data. It is hosted on the Celonis Marketplace.
• enC@SH focuses on improving working capital efficiency and aids in generating incremental free cash flow utilizing multiple simulators.
• Fintinel runs risk and audit analytics to bring effectiveness to the internal audit processes, uncovering potential frauds and vulnerabilities.
• DOPPELSKANNER eliminates duplicate transactions, including fuzzy and phonetic matches controlling financial leakages.
• Forecaster & Predictor uses an advanced analytics engine, including time series and multivariate models integrated with ML, to develop future predictions.

From our conversations with finance leaders, we see the FIAB modules align with evolving market needs. Today’s CFOs are more interested in data analysis that is easily consumable and provides them with recommendations that will enable better business decision making.

The Bottom Line: WNS FIAB responds well to current CFO pain points and should continue to demonstrate the value it is creating.

Data transparency and quality and the need for the right insights from the data are among the top challenges finance leaders face. With FIAB, WNS aims to deliver impactful observations and point finance leaders toward underlying risks or opportunities. However, WNS is not alone. Many of its peers, including TCS and EXL, have recognized that data is the biggest pain point for CFOs, and they are addressing the issue with their solutions, Cognix Platform and Digital Finance Suite (DFS), respectively. WNS must ensure it stays ahead in the competitive F&A space by continuously enhancing its proposition and magnifying the impact of value it delivers to its clients.