1. management - employees, advisors, contractual
staff, vendors and statutory agencies. The SSC was
India‟s first financial services set up servicing an
Indian audience and has recently won the “Best
Shared Services Centre in Financial Services-
Insurance 2012” award instituted by the All India
Management Association.
The challenges of jumping from manual to
automated
When ICICI set up its SSC in 2007, the organisation
was in a state of rapid expansion. In such
circumstances, the first priority was to processes that
are already in place to manage the expansion. At this
stage ICICI was largely manpower-focused, which
makes it prone to committing errors and delays.
At that point they decided to outsource a large part of
the Accounts Payable (AP) function through the lift
and shift model. (Editor‟s Note: „Lift and Shift‟ is a
terminology used in shared services and outsourcing
industry which basically means an existing process
is lifted out of its current organization and shifted
over to the third party.)
3 Unmistakable Ways to
Succeed in P2P Automation
Optimising purchase to pay processes is the goal of
every company, and in particular, accounting
departments are constantly seeking ways to
enhance efficiency, increase productivity and
improve quality. Automation is one such way. One of
the companies that are particularly successful at this
endeavour is ICICI Prudential Life Insurance
(www.iciciprulife.com). Kayzad Hiramanek, Senior
Vice President - Customer Service & Operations for
ICICI Prudential Life Insurance shared some
fascinating insights on their company‟s journey
towards P2P automation. He also revealed the 3
things every company must do to succeed in P2P
automation.
Background
Kayzad Hiramanek is heading the entire central
customer service and operations functions. He
oversees all customer proposal acceptance, on-
boarding, relationship & lifecycle management
through various forms of communication and contact
centre management as well as premium assurance.
Kayzad was also responsible in setting up ICICI‟s
shared services centre (SSC), which encompasses
the entire gamut of internal stakeholder lifecycle

2. conveyance and lease rentals. What also helped
was the introduction of what is known as an
„Agreement Management System‟ which ensured
that all vendors contracted with had current, renewed
contracts with all terms of reimbursement updated on
the system.
Finally, ICICI went live with the vendor
reimbursement portal in 2011. This portal gave the
vendors the power to raise their own
reimbursements and follow the entire processing
journey on ICICI‟s system until actual disbursal.
During this journey between 2008 and 2011, what
could be considered as the biggest contributor to
success was the company‟s vision to decongest the
process, bring the approvals and reminders to the
mobile phones of the senior leadership and finally,
get buy-in from the control teams to move the control
of claims-raising to vendor premises.
When asked what are the top 3 tips he would like to
share on P2P automation; Kayzad Hiramanek had
this to say:
First, ensure that you show immediate improvement
in service levels and have a truly service-oriented
approach to your stakeholders. Most AP practitioners
are trapped in „control‟ mind sets.
Second, have a seat at the table with your core
stakeholders so you can influenceorganisational
policies and practices and keep up with your vision
of turning paperless.
Finally, the entire automation process must be easily
adoptable to the user. A smooth usage experience
through an intuitive interface is key to keep your
automation journey alive and successful.
This action resulted in a reduction of internal
bandwidth stress. However vendor management
became a bigger challenge, as ICICI did not have the
skill set available within the organisation. This is the
point in time when the entire AP function was moved
to the SSC from the core finance team.
ICICI‟s first priority, post-takeover, was the
introduction of simple automation to make way for
segmented services to senior employees and
selected vendors. After this, they moved on to
payment controls, leveraging the company‟s home-
grown wrapper-based solution running off ICICI‟s
ERP system (SAP).
Then the next challenge was to change the mind set
of people performing core functions and encourage
them to invest in and adopt new technology.
The final challenge was to get a seat at the policy
decision-making table and influence organisational
policy towards P2P automation.
How the issues were addressed
To address the challenges faced in jumping from
manual to automated process, ICICI moved to a
service mind set through the company‟s front-end
software interface called Crossroads. All senior
management reimbursement claims and top vendor
claims got priority routing. To eliminate delays in
approval process, they moved the entire approvals
module right into the hands of approvers by making
Crossroads available on their mobile phones.
Thereafter, they implemented an organisational
policy to ensure that all high-volume and low-value
claims move to the paperless mode. This included
categories like mobile phone reimbursement, local
Kayzad Hiramanek, Senior Vice President - Customer Service & Operations for
ICICI Prudential Life Insurance will be speaking at Accounts Payable &
Purchasing Processes Summit China 2014 happening on 17-19 March 2014
in Shanghai. For more information, visit www.purchasetopaychina.com