Go-Ahead Group Replaces Manual Systems with a More Intuitive, End-User Friendly Process
Reshaping an Invoicing System Under Government Mandate
Case Study – Transport
When the UK’s Department for Transport announced sweeping changes to passenger compensation rules, the Go-Ahead Group turned to the Oracle EBS AP Invoice Wizard to rebuild its invoicing process within 24 hours.
The Client
The Go-Ahead Group, one of the UK’s leading public transport providers, delivering more than a billion journeys each year. Its rail operation is the busiest in the UK, handling around 30% of all train passenger journeys, while its bus operations cover roughly 25% of London services and 11% of the UK market overall.
The Challenge
In February 2018, the UK Government’s Minister for Transport announced major changes to compensation for delayed or canceled journeys: the qualifying threshold dropped from 30 minutes to 15, compensation shifted from vouchers to cash, and payouts moved to a sliding scale based on delay length and ticket type.
These changes were expected to push weekly compensation transactions up to 10,000, a volume the Go-Ahead Group’s manual process simply couldn’t handle. The new scheme also required supporting full and partial refunds, cash compensation, separate handling for season versus non-season tickets, and fast turnaround for customers, all within a very tight implementation window.
Complicating matters further, source data lived in a third-party CRM that would need to integrate with Oracle EBS, adding lead time that threatened the strict go-live deadline.
The Solution
The Go-Ahead Group implemented the More4apps AP Invoice Wizard, built on Microsoft Excel and Oracle’s public APIs. The team also updated its EBS setup, modifying its custom one-time payments process and BACS EFT payment program to correctly route payments using data held in Descriptive Flexfields (DFFs).
With the new process in place, customer and payment data, including BACS EFT details and one-off DFF information, was extracted from the CRM and loaded into the More4apps Excel spreadsheet. From there, data uploaded directly into Oracle EBS with real-time validation and automatic field mapping. Employees processed payments using their normal workflow, downloaded results back into the spreadsheet, and customers received status updates through the CRM. More4apps experts supported the rollout with hands-on installation help and end-user training.
The Results
The new system was fully audited and processed close to 20,000 claims a week, implemented faster than expected. The Go-Ahead Group also gained:
- A more robust interface process, saving time and resources
- Stronger audit control and reporting
- Additional dashboard features
- Batch invoice generation completed in minutes instead of hours
The tool’s ease of use drove rapid adoption across teams, and the Go-Ahead Group has since rolled out More4apps solutions for Supplier and Employee Maintenance and AR Invoice processing company-wide.