EY helps clients create long-term value for all stakeholders. Enabled by data and technology, our services and solutions provide trust through assurance and help clients transform, grow and operate.
At EY, our purpose is building a better working world. The insights and services we provide help to create long-term value for clients, people and society, and to build trust in the capital markets.
In the latest episode of our ‘Navigating Alliances’ series, we invite Kush Kumar of HighRadius, a technology-driven finance transformation company and Rishabh Jain, Partner, Finance Transformation, at EY India to explore the transformative potential of AI in finance. They also discuss strategic partnerships that are revolutionizing finance operations, particularly for CFOs and Global Capability Centers (GCCs). This podcast highlights key trends and insights from the EY-HighRadius collaboration, showcasing the future of finance in a rapidly evolving landscape.
In conversation with:
Rishabh Jain
Partner, Finance Transformation, EY India
Kush Kumar
Senior Vice President, Global Enterprise Sales, HighRadius
Key takeaways
AI and Generative AI are revolutionizing finance by enhancing efficiency, improving business outcomes and driving personalized customer interactions.
EY and HighRadius’ partnership integrates expertise in finance consulting and SaaS solutions, enabling CFOs to achieve digital transformation success.
Global Capability Centers (GCCs) in India offer vast potential for innovation but require a shift from back-office roles to decision-making leadership.
AI and automation are not just productivity tools; they are catalysts for CFOs to unlock measurable business outcomes like cash flow improvement.
Kush Kumar
Senior Vice President, Global Enterprise Sales, HighRadius
We are evolving from automation to embedding humans into technology, empowering CFOs to focus on optimizing revenue and business impact.
Rishabh Jain
Partner, Finance Transformation, EY India
For your convenience, a full-text transcript of this podcast is also available below.
Kush kumar: Hi everyone. Big thanks for having me here, Sudhir and Rishabh.
Sudhir: We are celebrating three years of collaboration between EY and HighRadius. Reflecting on this journey, what stands out to both of you? Rishabh, if you can start.
Rishabh Jain: HighRadius has been rated as the top leader in the Magic Quadrant for their credit-to-cash solution. Given that we work in Finance Transformation Consulting, we have been advising both global and Indian clients on their finance process transformation. This presented an opportunity for us to collaborate and create value for our clients by advising them process-led, tech-enabled solutions to accelerate value creation and achieve outcomes for our clients.
What stands out for me is the combination of the best-in-class competencies from both HighRadius and EY, which creates immense, sustainable, long-term value for our clients.
Sudhir Ramakrishnan: Thank you for that, Rishabh. Kush, your thoughts please.
Kush Kumar: This partnership is extremely strategic for us. EY is one of our top partners at HighRadius; it is a value- and outcome-driven partnership. As Rishabh mentioned, it truly brings the best of both worlds. EY has credibility with CFOs globally. It has the implementation and consulting horsepower, while HighRadius, a SaaS product organization with over 1,000 clients, is a global leader in ‘The Office of CFO’ space.
We bring in a lot of finance domain knowhow and industry-specific functional expertise. Together, we have the right ingredients to make an organization’s digital transformation journey a resounding success. Recently, we had our annual conference, Radiance, where this message resonated well with our clients, as we featured our joint success stories. I am extremely happy to see this partnership mature as we jointly add value to the office of the CFO.
Rishabh Jain: Absolutely! To further add, when we started this partnership at a global level, enabled by EY India, we have now transitioned into what we call run mode. This means that while we are leveraging the best of products like HighRadius, we are able to create impact for our clients with minimal support from HighRadius teams. We have built a global center of excellence, starting with an incubator, and the team that we have for HighRadius implementation consulting is one of the best, advising global clients out of India. This has been a great journey as well as a great learning experience for both of us.
Sudhir Ramakrishnan: Speaking about transformation, AI and Generative AI (GenAI), are topical across industries and domains, including ‘The Office of CFO’. How are these technologies reshaping businesses and what trends are emerging that you can observe? Kush, perhaps you can start.
Kush Kumar: Today, CFOs have to balance inflation-driven cost headwinds with organizational growth goals. Luckily for me, being part of a fintech organization, we converse with CFOs of Fortune 1000 companies. AI and Generative AI are undoubtedly the top tech investment areas for CFOs. It makes sense as these technologies are true catalysts for unlocking additional value in digital transformation projects, because they can completely reshape the entire value proposition for the business function.
However, I believe that adopting these technologies depends on the specific use cases of the business function and their measurable outcomes. To give an example from HighRadius perspective, CFOs are betting big on these technologies and betting big on us because we are using these technologies to drive business outcomes.
When I say business outcomes, I mean outcomes like Day Sales Outstanding (DSO) reduction, bad debt reduction, working capital or cash flow improvement, and forecasting accuracy. Taking an example of one of our products, if you look at B2B collections process in order-to-cash, HighRadius uses AI models to help clients identify the low hanging fruit - their end customers who can pay the quickest and their mode of payment.
Then we use GenAI to send personalized notes on unpaid invoices. This helps our customers in two ways: first is the efficiency and productivity, and second is the impact on their customer satisfaction, that is their customer satisfaction score (CSAT). Because you do not have a cookie cutter treatment for all your customers.
Likewise, in other products, we have AI-based fraudulent detection model, we have blocked order prediction in credit, GenAI-based password remittance and gleam capture in our deductions and cash application product. Personally, I feel there is a direct correlation between this new-age tech and the additional value that they bring and can unlock. Rishabh, what do you think?
Rishabh Jain: Great insight, Kush. Given that we work with a lot of global organizations through our corridors and through our Global Capability Centers GCCs in India, we are seeing a lot of traction and trust. We did our GenAI Conclave recently; there is a lot of interest in the teams to explore and understand.
I am glad to say that there are a couple of large global organizations, including consumer products organizations that are taking steps to move forward by conducting proof-of-concept projects on GenAI. AI has been around for a while and all of these use cases you mentioned, Kush, are very much prevalent.
I will talk about one of the clients that is using GenAI chatbot also to place orders for their customers. They are making the whole experience seamless, which integrates well with HighRadius ecosystem and creates a synergetic environment.
One of the other use cases is more about reporting, where you have personas and those personas would simply go and look at all the data, ask questions, and the analysis would throw. It is great to partner with HighRadius, given that they continue to invest in leading technology.
In the end, I will say that it is it is more like we had taken the manual work away from humans earlier with the advent of automation, and as someone said, we are now putting human back into technology to make it smarter.
We have a long way to go, but we are seeing some organizations truly take a lead in this area.
Kush Kumar: That is true, Rishabh. I think HighRadius also has the same message of humans plus AI, that you very well put. I am totally aligned with you on that message.
Sudhir: With global capability centers in India gaining momentum, there is a lot of focus on creating value globally, but from a local source. Kush, what do you see as the biggest opportunity and the challenge in transforming these GCC functions in India and around the world?
Kush Kumar: I have a contrarian view, but the leading indicators of the GCC glorificationin India are extremely positive, and we all know that. I do not want to preach to the choir, but considering the number of GCC and the revenue that they generate, the relevant talent pool that we have and the availability of real estate, the value creation, moving from productivity to driving cognitive innovation – and with the geopolitical advantage – it is clear that India is technically the only option that all headquarters have.
I read it somewhere and I strongly believe it also that we will move from ‘Incredible India’ to ‘Inevitable India’. It is a very powerful statement. So, while everything looks very encouraging my only apprehension is that GCCs should not end up being, for lack of a better term, an elite back-office operation.
While I say that, like I know that on paper, the distance between the GCC and the headquarters has diminished, most of the decision making is still with the headquarters. To have distributed leadership, we need change in the mindset of the headquarters, which starts from driving the same culture across the world, what they have in their in-market headquarters.
I personally believe we are very talent rich, but we have to pivot to be leadership rich. And this journey of being back office to functional influencers to decision makers will take time, but that pivot will happen with the cultural and the mindset change. I am really looking forward to hearing what the Rishabh has to say on this.
Rishabh Jain: You are absolutely right, Kush. As pe a recent report, there are 5,000 global roles in India. Having said that, in majority of GCCs, the decision making is still largely influenced by the headquarters, but there are certain mature consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies, financial services companies where the decision making is also happening here. I agree, there is still a long distance to cover. Good to see that we are talking about it. In the newspapers, you can see there are articles specifically on GCCs, so there is indeed a lot of traction and focus on GCCs.
Sudhir Ramakrishnan: The entire ecosystem is waxing lyrical about how GCCs are being anchored in India, but to have an alternate view, which is backed by such a coherent thought process, that is brilliant Kush. Hopefully we will make these strides. The gap, as you said, is reduced to as low as it can, and we see more power concentrating here in India. Rishabh, may I ask how we see EY addressing the avalanche of GCCs that are culminating here in India?
Rishabh Jain: EY has been supporting global organizations in setting up GCCs for nearly two decades, even though it started with an outsourcing journey. Given that there are close to 1,600 GCS in India, we have set up a dedicated team for those accounts who have GCCs in India.
Having a dedicated team has helped us to be closer to our customers, integrated as one global team of EY. We work very closely with our global account teams to ensure that we deliver the best possible value to our clients through GCCs, creating a global impact. So, it is a definitely a very special focus for India. You would also see our GCC Leader Arindam Sen doing a lot of events, and you could also access the details on LinkedIn, where we are reaching out to the best of GCCS, sharing snippets of knowledge and understanding their journeys.
We are very well engaged, learning, helping our clients in creating value at a global and an enterprise level through GCCs.
Sudhir Ramakrishnan: Thank you for that, Rishabh. Now over to you, Kush. In the face of the ever-evolving customer needs within the CFO space, how does HighRadius adapt and innovate?
Kush Kumar: I will give you a two-part answer. First, I will talk about what is changing and how we are evolving and adapting to that. The second is what is not changing in this everchanging environment.
What we are learning is that if you are still leading with labor cost arbitrage or full-time equivalent (FTE) savings, then that is out of the window. CFOS want autonomous solutions that focus on business outcomes such as DSO reduction, bad debt reduction or net recovery rate (NRR) improvement.
I will also talk about one of our other products, which is called Deduction Management. It helps organizations avoid revenue leakage by proactively identifying the deductions or disputes and seamlessly collaborating with all internal departments like logistics and sales through a workflow. It helps resolve deductions and disputes efficiently, thereby improving your net recovery, because you are able to recover more of your invalid deductions.
Now, a mere 5 to 10% improvement in NRR adds up to tens of millions of dollars to our customers’ bottom line. That is what CFOs are signing us for. CFOs today are signing outcome-based contracts with us to help them recover their invalid deductions and disputes. It is a win-win as both parties have skin in the game.
We are today investing in our tech and AI algorithms to get more accurate valid/invalid predictions and customers are investing this regained capital back in their business. That is why 11 out of the top 12 CPG companies globally use HighRadius to manage their deductions.
Secondly, in the debate of this generalists versus specialists, CFOs are relying on specialists and not on the jack of all trades softwares. When I say jack of all trades, I means the ERPs today, which are playing the role of a generalist.
For example, I have an insurance customer that works with insurance brokers and their customers pay premiums. Then a CPG customer who works with retailers and they have trade and non-trade deductions. Likewise, the staffing customer has their end-customer filling timesheets. These customers have complexities and nuances and these demand verticals solutions. This cannot be addressed by ERPs or by homegrown solutions.
When I talk about these specialist solutions, I am talking about software platforms, not point solutions. And hence, at HighRadius, we built ‘The Office of CFO’ platform, which serves as a one-stop shop for all the finance leaders to view, slice and dice their performance on receivables, forecasts, payables and reconciliation.
Coming to the second part - what is not changing in this changing environment. The one thing that does not change is that every organization wants to do more with less. Organizations are growing through consolidation, mergers & acquisitions (M&A) or moving to new geographies, but they do not want to hire in the same proportion. Productivity and efficiency is still a play, but what can be automated must be automated, but not primarily for productivity dollars as I mentioned earlier.
Let me take the example of a very common product across the industry; it is called Collections Management. I will tell you about how we are differentiating in this space. Our clients have big box retailers like Walmart, Kroger, Cosco and Target as their end customers. These are large B2B buyers; they are not expecting a call from the sellers on their open invoices – that collection model is a dying model.
Today, the finance factory of every organization relies on machine-to-machine interaction with their vendors and customers. Whether it is AP Portal Integration, automated dunning, or customized GenAI wrapped emails and notifications – that is where we are investing.
Some of our customers already have very lean teams. They have either outsourced it to BPOs or they have their own captive units in India and other places, but CFOs are still onboarding automation not for the productivity problems, but for standardization across all BUs and geographies. No CFO wants to be a tech laggard. I know that was a monologue there, but I hope you understand we are talking about the rainmaker here, the CFO. Rishabh?
Rishabh Jain: I have the utmost confidence in your product roadmap and capability, Kush. I believe there is tremendous opportunity for us to continue to create impact for our clients. We are working on a couple of projects where we are leveraging some of the newest features such as auto-match for trade promotion claims. We are leveraging our clients’ needs and requirements, working very closely with your value comm (value component) and product team to provide feedback on potential product enhancements, helping CFOs become Chief Value Officers.
This means spending less time on transactional activities, automated controls and self-service reporting, while being closer to business finance to optimize revenue and margins. These ongoing investments you are making will certainly be harnessed by our clients, and we are already seeing initial success as our partnership and alliance have matured over the years.
Sudhir: Thank you very much, Kush for so eloquently laying out HighRadius’ plans. I wanted to ask Rishabh how we are going to leverage the expertise, but you have put it out so beautifully. This is very insightful. Hopefully, people understand this, and we continue to add more value to our customers.
Based on our extremely positive conversation today, I want to know what lies in the future for our alliance. How do we see the focus moving forward, and how does that shape our joint offerings in the next few months and years?
Rishabh Jain: We have seen great success in one of the solution areas - The Office of CFO, which is around credit-to-cash or customer-to-cash area. But there are efforts on our side to further optimize, enhance our skills as we evolve, and embed the HighRadius solution offerings into our Transformation Realized methodology.
For the audience, Transformation Realized is our globally developed methodology, consisting of three components:
Technology@speed, which aligns closely with the speed-to-value that HighRadius emphasizes.
Innovation@scale, meaning we must continuously innovate by embedding new features and capabilities, both horizontally and vertically.
Humans@center, which focuses on equipping business end-users or CFOs to become Chief Value Officers, as I mentioned earlier.
There is a lot of potential for us to scale our capabilities to create impact for our clients, both by deepening our product knowledge, working together to create impact for the client, but at the same time also, leveraging additional areas such as treasury, cash, and closing - different areas of ‘The Office of CFO’ that HighRadius is investing in. Over to you, Kush, for your reflections.
Kush Kumar: I think you have covered it all. EY and HighRadius alliance is client centric and all about value proposition. It is all about what we bring to the table, how we drive a positive impact. Like we already said earlier in the conversation, we both bring our own strengths together and the right ingredients. We will keep working together and making this partnership mature on maximizing impact and RoI. Like Rishabh mentioned, I am really excited and looking forward to extending our relationship from order-to-cash to the other aspects of ‘The Office of CFO’; see how we can drive value and unlock value for ‘The Office of CFO’.
Rishabh Jain: I will just add that we are also making investment to create fit for purpose, industry specific process repository, which we already have, to further see what the automation hotspots are to create impact because order-to-cash is very industry specific in certain areas, and it does require that industry nuance.
We are in the process of further evolving this alliance and creating sector or industry-specific joint solution offering. That is something that we need to further discuss and elaborate and take forward. I am excited to talk about that, but it is still in its early days.
Sudhir: Thank you for that. Looks like there is an inside scoop that we have achieved on this episode today. But hopefully, we do make it through and there is a lot of success and a lot of positivity in the future for this alliance. On that note, Rishabh, Kush, it has been an absolute pleasure having you both sharing your expertise and your insights and this inside scoop with us today.
Thank you very much for joining us. Kush, any thoughts about how this episode was and what lies in the future?
Kush Kumar: It was a pleasure to be here. It was an excellent conversation. Thanks, Rishabh for sharing all those insights and learnings. Great to be a part of this. Thanks a lot, Sudhir for setting this up and making me part of this podcast. I am very excited. Like we said, EY is one of the top partners of HighRadius, so we have a long way to go. In this journey of the office of the CFO, I am really looking forward to more collaborations like these.
Sudhir Ramakrishnan: Indeed. Rishabh, your thoughts?
Rishabh Jain: Thank you, Sudhir and the EY Alliances team for making us take out our time for such a wonderful experience. I learned a lot today, Kush, from your perspectives and insights. I am looking forward to continuing to scale our joint solution offerings for the market. Thank you, Kush for your time.
Sudhir: Thank you very much. With that, we wrap up another episode of India Insights Navigating Alliances. A big thank you to our listeners for tuning in. Stay connected for more episodes where we will uncover similar such key insights from the EY partner ecosystem. If there is a topic you would like us to discuss, please reach out to us on our website or email it to us at markets.eyindia@in.ey.com. Until next time, thank you for listening in and goodbye.
If you would like to listen to our podcasts on the go:
