6 Responsibilities of a GPO at Hanes Brands

Apparel market leader, HanesBrands finds its products in 8 out of 10 US households. It’s a huge operation, and one of the few where the company owns manufacturing, logistics, distribution and retail.

This complexity maybe one of the reasons it has only recently set up its shared services operation. Established in 2014, the shared services was robustly supported by the CEO, Chairman and CFO. With the creation of the shared services organization came the emergence of the Global Process Owner role.

Russell D’Souza, Vice-President Global Shared Services joined us at out the Global Process Owner Summit in Chicago last week to tell us about the role.

Aspirations are strong, with a central desire to have the GPO role realize the following:

• Align major end-to-end processes
• Responsible for the process no matter where it resides in Hanesbrands
• Provide governance over the process – including setting policy, review procedures, and lead technology ideation

HanesBrands is very clear on what the GPO responsibilities are, and these include to:

1. Define the mission, strategy and vision of the global process
2. Develop goals and objectives for the process
3. Ensure adequate internal controls are maintained in the process
4. Develop process performance measures and track performance against measures
5. Define and prioritize process improvement initiatives
6. Act as the “voice” of the process to constituents

The scope includes:

In Purchase to Pay:

• PO Process
• Spot Buys
• Direct / Indirect Procurement
• Supplier Relations
• Review and Process Payments
• P-Card Admin
• Discrepancy resolution
• Period Close and Reconciliation

In Order to cash

• Orders
• Schedule
• Invoicing
• Risk
• Collection
• Cash Apps
• Vendor Compliance
• Trade MAP spend
• Claims verification
• Payment / dispute

Although only 12 months into the GPO role, the company is seeing successes, for example having implemented a governance structure that enforces discipline around policies that were not strictly adhered to previously, in the legacy environment. This, and other successes are likely down to the fact that the executive team understand the value of the GPO role, and secondly that the GPO’s objectives are aligned across the company, and as Russell says “starting at the top.”