Giving Treasury Extra Firepower

Galls Turns Up the Heat with Bottomline TreasuryXpress

With billion-dollar growth plans on the table, Kendall Weissmueller, Corporate Controller, Galls, knew that the company’s treasury technology needed to be upgraded – to support the wider organisation today and tomorrow. Using Bottomline TreasuryXpress he found the right system, and partner, to deliver a cutting-edge technology roll-out – in the middle of a global pandemic – deserving of TMI’s 2020 Corporate Recognition Award for Best TMS Implementation.

Over the past six years, Galls, a leading US supplier and retailer of public safety equipment and uniforms, has acquired 20 companies, grown retail sites from 10 to 80, and set its sights on international expansion. But technological complexity behind the scenes was hindering treasury’s ability to support those growth plans.

Weissmueller knew change was needed – and wanted an agile system that would plug in with minimal effort and bring treasury more into alignment with the rest of the finance function. Any new system also needed to be flexible enough to help Galls meet its $1bn revenue target by 2024.

As soon as Weissmueller saw Bottomline’s solution, he knew it was a winner – in large part due to its intuitive user experience. With the decision made without hesitation, onboarding began in late 2019. Leaving time for Weissmueller to tie up year-end responsibilities, the implementation picked up pace again in early 2020.

Then, the Covid-19 pandemic hit. Yet the Bottomline TreasuryXpress team was ready with a virtual implementation approach that saw Galls up and running in no time.

Planning pays dividends

This quick, and fruitful, roll-out was helped significantly by Galls’ effective planning prior to the implementation. Weissmueller had a detailed plan of what he wanted to achieve through the TMS, namely: consolidation, reporting, and cash forecasting. And the Bottomline TreasuryXpress team was able to deliver on all three components.

1. Consolidation
As a result of acquisitions, Galls had absorbed multiple legacy bank accounts. Some of these had already been centralised as the project rolled out, but due to ongoing integration of new businesses, treasury was working on upwards of 15 different accounts each day. Obtaining a consolidated cash position was tough, therefore. “This was especially true during the pandemic when liquidity and cash could be a major issue; we felt we needed to know all of our positions in real time,” he recalls. Bottomline’s agile technology now provides this consolidated view, on demand – at the simple click of a button.

2. Reporting
Galls’ private-equity stakeholders understandably require core information on a regular basis, as does the operational side of the business. Rapid reporting of consolidated positions was vital, therefore. Bottomline has enabled this with integration between systems, including Galls’ home-grown enterprise resource planner (ERP) and other third-party software in its stack. To give an example, on the accounts side alone, Weissmueller has seen considerably faster financial close and reconciliation processes. With daily bank transfers – including many from its zero-balance accounts – this alone represented around two days’ journal entry work for the team. “We now have a TMS report that produces journal entries for us. We just load it, error-free, and save most of that two-day effort,” he observes. “And that is just one report.”

3. Cash forecasting
Prior to rolling out Bottomline TreasuryXpress, forecasting was a manual effort at Galls, involving a largely spreadsheet-based process. Weissmueller was therefore delighted to have the use of the ‘forecasting to actual’ variance tool. And the TMI judges were impressed with the fact that Galls has used this implementation as the catalyst to reflect on and improve its own forecasting processes. In fact, reviewing its forecasting procedures has led to Galls gleaning greater efficiencies, which have in turn enabled the technology to run optimally, yielding further improvements in the forecasting process. This is the definition of best practice.

Alongside the above benefits, Galls has also garnered significant time savings. The TMI judges applauded the fact that the company’s Senior Finance Director is now able to prepare for the company’s weekly cash forecasting call in half the time it took previously. The wider finance and treasury teams have also experienced time savings, enabling them to focus on more value-adding activities.

Always thinking ahead

Elsewhere, the TMI judges recognised Weissmueller’s dedication to taking the Bottomline TreasuryXpress implementation further – not least by looking to move beyond the ‘variance to actual’ cash flow forecasting analysis towards automated cash flow modelling. While the journey so far has merited a well-deserved Award for Galls, this is by no means the end of story for the two partners.