IT Group

Gardenia worked with a global IT and cyber specialist, with revenues of > €5Bn, offices in over 45 countries across 5 continents, and customers in more than 170 countries worldwide.

To support an upcoming credit rating review, the client needed to quickly assess their global working capital performance and identify improvement opportunities. This complex project involved diverse markets, high invoice volumes, and multiple ERPs. Partnering with Gardenia, the client completed the assessment in under two weeks, integrating data streams and gaining actionable insights to present to investors and substantiate their discussions with different rating agencies.

Objectives

Analyse the client's global working capital performance to provide:

• A clear picture of their historical and current performance.
• Validated opportunities for future improvement.

Challenges

The project required collecting and processing data from 3 ERP instances, 40+ subsidiaries, 1.75M+ invoices, 17,000+ customers, and 8,000+ suppliers.

Solution

Gardenia extracted and processed ERP data, applied AI models, and produced interactive dashboards highlighting current metrics and improvement opportunities. These dashboards allow for drill-down, validation, and data export.

Gardenia provided the client with:

1. Global Visibility – Unified view of working capital across subsidiaries and ERPs.
2. Granular Insights – Cash Conversion Cycle statistics at any level of aggregation.
3. Validated Targets – Opportunities for 28% DSO and 8% DPO improvement.
4. Defendable Reporting – Dynamic evidence-based reporting for stakeholders.
5. Forward-looking planning - Dashboards for ongoing financial planning.

Results

• ‍€12.1Bn Financial transactions analysed
• €223.9M Validated cash release from 28% DSO reduction
• €74.2 M Validated 8% DPO cash improvement through normalisation of terms
• 887,000 Payables invoices processed
• 865,000 Receivables invoices processed
• 25,000 Customers and suppliers profiled
• 41 Subsidiaries analysed
• 3 ERP instances integrated
• <2 Weeks project timeline

The data was presented to the client in a set of dashboards designed to provide comprehensive views of their working capital health and opportunities. Gardenia dashboards allow users to see both:

• ‍High-Level Insights: the platform analyses data across the breadth of the client’s operations to get a holistic reading of the company’s financial health.‍
• Granular Detail: each number can be drilled down to its components including individual suppliers/customers or even specific invoices.

“Gardenia enables teams to analyse, set and achieve their working capital targets. With AI-powered analytics and industry expertise, we help teams transform complex data into actionable, achievable strategies.” - Federico Thibaud, Co-Founder Gardenia Technologies

The ability to provide both broad and granular insights was key for the client’s due diligence preparation. The data enabled the client to:

• Provide a comprehensive, data-driven assessment of working capital needs
• Audit compliance against company policies for each counterparty and market
• Tailor benchmarks to actual business practices rather than one-size-fits-all
• Identify trends to inform forecasts and targets

In under two weeks, the client prepared a comprehensive assessment of its global working capital performance, with evidence-based and repeatable reporting for the rating agency.