Over the last ten years, Decathlon has been the victim of several fraud attempts, including three cases that were not detected by internal services and were only stopped by the controls of the beneficiaries' banks. Facing this risk, Decathlon's Finance Department decided to strengthen Company ID and bank account control processes to fight wire transfer fraud.
Across a database of more than 22,288 third parties, the team was frequently confronted with bank rejections because old accounts had not been updated. Invoices were issued in the name of company A and paid to company B, because no one had checked the invoice or requested changes to the contact details or company name.
The goal was to clean up the company's Vendor Master File and automate Company ID and bank account pairing controls to reduce the risk of fraud.
Solution
Decathlon carried out a complete audit of its Vendor Master File with Trustpair, including analysis of errors and anomalies and mass data corrections. The project followed four steps:
- Extraction of the third-party database: The first step was to extract the database according to Trustpair's technical specifications. This required upfront consideration of the database's technical parameters to establish the fields that could identify errors, such as active and inactive suppliers. Standardizing the data was a key step that facilitated processing.
- Trustpair's audit report: Trustpair technology supported the second step. Within a few hours, the solution delivered a global overview of supplier-related data using different statuses: favorable, unfavorable, or anomaly.
- Audit analysis: The third step was to analyze the audit feedback. This helped the team understand past errors in internal control procedures: why an IBAN was incorrect, or why a VAT number did not correspond to the supplier.
- Corrections and revision of internal control processes: Trustpair's audit feedback and support provided the tools needed to correct the Vendor Master File. The technology offered smart suggestions for company data, including VAT, SIRET, or a foreign equivalent, saving time when correcting third parties with anomalies. According to Michele Bruno, "During the Vendor Master File phase, we spent some time with Trustpair analyzing the audit results in order to fully understand the types of errors. This support enabled us to make decisions: to adjust the internal audit process to avoid future errors and to correct existing supplier data."
Before Trustpair, when new bank details were added, the team made counter-calls by phone and completed all the associated steps manually, but the Finance Department could not verify that controls had been carried out consistently by operational staff. Michele Bruno goes on to explain, "Humans make mistakes. It's hard to compete with server accuracy and augmented intelligence." The Finance Department worked daily with a Vendor Master File containing 15,000 active suppliers out of 22,288 third parties registered in a long-standing database, with no visibility into the actual status of third parties: whether records were duplicated, created incorrectly, still active, or belonged to companies that had closed down.
"We asked ourselves the following question: is the data in our Vendor Master File correct? Trustpair quickly gave us the answer when the review of our third-party database identified errors in one third of the records," explains Michele Bruno.
With Trustpair, the Finance Department no longer performs emergency consistency controls. It now benefits from a database of 15,000 active suppliers with reliable data and validated controls for each one. "With Trustpair's control methodology, it is no longer just a consistency check that we run, but an exact confirmation of the validity of the supplier. Fraud risk no longer exists," remarks Michele Bruno.
Reliable information is available in 30 seconds before making a payment to a supplier. Some supplier checks take longer, as additional controls are delegated to Trustpair's teams. This automation and outsourcing frees up internal time by removing phone calls and other manual actions. Decathlon's team now carry out reinforced controls only when specific expertise is needed, because Trustpair has reported an anomaly, and in those cases the team applies its skills and demonstrates its added value.
