The challenge

A global manufacturing group with operations across 15 countries and annual revenues exceeding £4 billion had no unified view of enterprise spend. The company had grown through a series of acquisitions over the previous decade, and each acquired entity had brought its own systems, processes and financial controls.

Multiple ERPs with no common data model. Three Oracle ERP instances, two SAP environments and several local finance systems. Each had its own chart of accounts, cost centre structure, supplier coding and approval configuration. There was no common taxonomy.

Procurement operated regionally with no central oversight. Each region had its own procurement team, supplier relationships and approval processes. The Group CFO had no way to verify whether the delegation of authority was being followed consistently.

Spend data arrived late and in incompatible formats. The monthly consolidated spend report took 15 business days to produce after month-end. Decisions were always based on outdated information.

Approval compliance was low and unverifiable. An internal audit found that only 65% of procurement transactions could be evidenced as having followed the correct approval process. The remaining 35% were either approved by the wrong person, approved above the approver's delegation limit, or had no evidence of approval at all.

Budget overruns were discovered retrospectively. The Group CFO described the situation as "driving by looking in the rear-view mirror."

Supplier fragmentation was costing millions. Over 3,400 suppliers across 15 countries, many of them duplicates across different ERP instances. Initial analysis suggested 8–12% savings potential from consolidation.

The Group CFO engaged Jalubro to design and implement a cross-functional spend visibility and control framework.

What Jalubro delivered

Phase 1: Spend landscape assessment and taxonomy design (10 weeks)

Jalubro mapped the data structures, approval configurations, cost categorisations and reporting processes across all entities and ERP instances. Findings: 14 different chart of accounts structures, 23 different cost centre hierarchies, no common spend categorisation, 5 different approval routing configurations and no master supplier list.

Jalubro designed a group spend taxonomy: a common categorisation framework covering four levels (spend domain, category, sub-category and line item). Each entity's existing chart of accounts was mapped to the group taxonomy. The mapping was designed to be applied automatically through the integration layer, so entities did not need to change their local systems.

Phase 2: Integration and data platform (4 months)

Real-time data extraction. Spend data extracted from each ERP instance in near real time through scheduled integrations running multiple times per day.

Automated taxonomy mapping. Data automatically mapped to the group taxonomy using centrally maintained mapping rules.

Supplier matching and deduplication. A matching engine using company registration data, tax identifiers, bank details, address matching and name similarity identified that 3,400+ suppliers consolidated to approximately 2,100 unique relationships.

Data quality controls. Automated checks for missing cost centres, unmatched supplier codes, transactions without approval references and unmappable spend entries.

Phase 3: Approval governance framework

Unified delegation of authority. A single delegation matrix replacing five different regional interpretations.

Dynamic enforcement across ERPs. The approval framework enforced within each ERP instance dynamically through the integration layer. Changes to the delegation deployed once, centrally, taking effect across all five ERPs simultaneously.

Aggregate spend controls. Cumulative spend monitoring triggering alerts and additional approval requirements when thresholds are approached.

Exception capture and evidence. Every approval, routing decision and exception captured with full attribution and timestamps. Governed exception workflow for legitimate overrides.

Phase 4: Dashboards and reporting (6 weeks)

Group CFO dashboard. Real-time total enterprise spend by category, entity, region and supplier. Budget consumption with automatic variance alerts. Delegation compliance metrics.

Regional finance dashboards. Spend, budget variance, supplier activity and approval compliance per region with entity and transaction drill-down.

Procurement dashboards. Spend by supplier, category and entity with supplier consolidation opportunities highlighted. Contract compliance metrics.

Audit and compliance reporting. Pre-built reports for internal audit covering delegation compliance, exception volumes, maverick spend and data quality metrics. Available on demand.

Phase 5: Supplier consolidation programme (ongoing)

The supplier matching exercise identified that 18 of the group's top 50 suppliers by spend had multiple records across entities. Jalubro supported the first wave of consolidation negotiations covering facilities management, IT hardware, logistics and professional services.

The results

Approval compliance improved from 65% to 98% in the first quarter. The 2% non-compliance consists of governed exceptions with full evidence, not uncontrolled breaches.

Monthly reporting close time reduced by 40%. From 15 business days to 9, with a target of 5.

Real-time spend visibility for the first time. Dashboards showing enterprise spend across all 15 countries, updated in near real time.

3,400+ suppliers consolidated to 2,100 unique relationships. First wave of consolidation negotiations delivered £3.8 million in annualised savings across four categories.

Single delegation of authority enforced across all entities. Five regional interpretations replaced by one group framework enforced dynamically across five ERP environments.

Full audit trail across every procurement decision. Zero delegation compliance findings in the post-programme audit, compared with 35% non-compliance previously.

Data quality transformed. Exception rates below 2% within three months of go-live.

What made the difference

Taxonomy before technology. The group spend taxonomy was the foundation for everything. Without a common language for spend, the integration layer would have moved data between systems without making it comparable.

Enforcement through integration, not ERP reconfiguration. Rather than reconfiguring five ERPs, Jalubro built enforcement into the integration layer. Changes deploy once, centrally, across all five environments.

Cross-functional design from the start. The programme was designed to serve finance, procurement and leadership simultaneously, not as a finance project that procurement would later adapt to.

To discuss how Jalubro can deliver spend visibility and control across your enterprise, contact our team.