John Hancock Signature Services
Company: John Hancock Signature Services, Boston, MA
Company Description: JHSS is made up of 157 associates and serves as the transfer agent and service provider for JHF, its shareholders, and financial professionals. JHF manages more than $77.8 billion* in open-end funds, closed-end funds, private accounts, retirement plans, and related party assets for individual and institutional investors with more than one million shareholders worldwide. *as of 9/30/2012
Nomination Category: Customer Service & Call Center Awards Achievement Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Best Use of Technology in Customer Service
Nomination Title: Back Office Support for Finance Team
Tell the story about how technology has improved your customer service initiatives since the beginning of July 2011 (up to 500 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:
The John Hancock Signature Services (JHSS) Finance Team is responsible for administering payment of all service fee invoices to 3rd Party record-keepers for John Hancock Mutual Funds. As a result of the transition to Omnibus shareholder accounting in the Mutual Fund industry, the Finance Team anticipated paying over 700 invoices in 2012, representing a tenfold increase over previous years. This number of invoices represents multi million dollars’ worth of fees which span across 85 different providers. Faced with a highly-manual payment process, it became imperative that JHSS automate the invoice workflow as much as possible.
In 2011, the Finance Team began a year-long project to evaluate and improve the process, demonstrating their commitment to technological innovation, efficiency, enhanced security and management of expenses.
The previous workflow was manually intensive, time consuming, high-risk, and financially inefficient. These challenges contributed to a host of inefficiencies including: manual payment administration, data collection, the inability to track unpaid or unprocessed invoices and a lack of centralized provider information. The team also struggled with the ability to accurately forecast and manage expenses, which exposed the company to potential risk.
The Finance team approached an external business partner with the directive to develop a proprietary web-based application that would provide the team with enhanced automation tools. The team provided a list of their specific requirements to enhance the existing functionality. Working in partnership, they were able to develop a custom application that would introduce dozens of innovative features to streamline the invoice workflow and add efficiencies and controls to the overall process.
The development, testing, and implementation of the Exadel system represented a large team effort among several key departments at John Hancock. Every aspect of the system was evaluated to ensure it would be cost-effective, meet stringent compliance and regulatory oversight standards, and provide restricted access in the most secure manner possible. Each participant was involved in testing all functionality, identifying issues that arose during testing, and ensuring that all defects were resolved prior to implementation. Changes were documented and communicated to all impacted parties to ensure that the transition would be seamless.
In January 2012, the new system was put into production and the positive impact was immediate. The Finance Team now had a centralized, consistent workflow that was entirely automated. Invoices would be uploaded to a secure server where payments could be efficiently processed and reconciled.
The system also provides a means of storing all pertinent vendor details including billing methodologies, contract terms and payment instructions. Through Exadel, extensive reporting on the status of invoices at every step of the cycle, including payment confirmation details and fund-billable expenses are now readily available.
The Finance Team is now able to efficiently and effectively manage all invoices through their entire life cycle. Overall, the automation enhancements have resulted in improved transparency, expedited month-end expense reporting and forecasting, reduced risk of error and audit gaps, and have provided innovative methods for key account managers to easily assess the status of each service providers’ billing relationship.
Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader(s) of the nominated customer service organization:
Charles Rizzo is Senior Vice President and CFO for John Hancock Funds. He is responsible for overseeing Fund Administration which is charged with the financial management and oversight of the platforms that support the mutual fund and variable insurance products sold by John Hancock in the U.S. He is also the President and CEO of JHSS. Previous professional experience includes: Vice President/Manager at Goldman Sachs and Managing Director for the Deutsche and Scudder Family of Funds.
He started in public accounting at Coopers & Lybrand and remains active with the ICI and NICSA. Rizzo holds a B.S. from Bentley College.