TransUnion - July 2022

TRANS UNION

This is the realising TransUnion: headline of savings procurement the added featurevalue and

DIGITAL REPORT 2022

DIGITAL REPORT 2022

IN ASSOCIATION IN ASSOCIATION WITH: WITH:

Realising procurement savings and added value

2

transunion.com

TRANS UNION

transunion.com

3

TRANS UNION

Damon Ascolani, Head of Global Procurement at TransUnion

4

transunion.com

Damon Ascolani, Head of Global Procurement at TransUnion, discusses the importance of procurement in M&A activity and how organisations can realise value

T

1968 Year founded

10.6K+

Number of employees

$3bn Revenue (2021)

ransUnion is a global information and insights company that makes trust possible between businesses and consumers and is one of the three largest consumer reporting agencies in the US. “We provide the information that makes the relationship between consumers and business possible,” says Damon Ascolani, Head of Global Procurement at TransUnion.

From credit scores to ID verification, alternative credit data, analytics, marketing, and debt collection strategies, TransUnion is the single source of information for aiding its clients in these areas.

Whilst Ascolani’s current stint at the company began in 2017, he previously worked for the company back in 1998. “I was able to see the company before it became a public organisation,” says Ascolani.

“20 years ago, the company was private and very back office. Today – and ever since it became public – TransUnion has a very entrepreneurial mindset. It’s an older company, but it acts like a startup with an open-minded and innovative culture.

Its mission statement is ‘Information for Good’, enabling financial inclusion to people everywhere in the world.”

transunion.com

5

TRANS UNION

TransUnion: realising procurement savings and added value

“ TransUnion has a very entrepreneurial mindset. It’s an older company, but it acts like a startup with an open-minded and innovative culture” DAMON ASCOLANI

HEAD OF GLOBAL PROCUREMENT, TRANS UNION

6

transunion.com

Procurement’s growing importance in M&A activity When it comes to mergers and acquisitions (M&A), procurement is steadily becoming an important process both before and after a merger or acquisition. “In particular, this can be seen in the due diligence process, assessing vendor footprints to build a business case for synergies,” explains Ascolani.

“There are also contractual elements, servicing rights with partial divestitures and acquisitions, and I’ve found that the more

DAMON ASCOLANI TITLE: HEAD OF GLOBAL PROCUREMENT INDUSTRY: PROCUREMENT LOCATION: CHICAGO, US

procurement is involved in M&A activities, the more value we are able to provide due to our expertise in vendor spend and dynamic product suites.

“In this scenario, TransUnion helps organisations to develop business cases for potential M&A activity – we provide the information that is valuable to that discussion. After the deal is done, its then about achieving those synergies, making sure that all vendors are integrated and that our stakeholders are getting the best rates, terms, and overall value from their spend.”

EXECUTIVE BIO

Damon Ascolani is a highly accomplished, legally trained senior procurement leader with global experience managing purchasing departments with specialties in building procurement departments, M&A, cost savings initiatives, contracts management, and process streamlining.

He received a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and has a law degree from The University of Illinois-Chicago John Marshall Law School and was admitted to the Illinois Bar in 2012.

Mr. Ascolani currently works at TransUnion, one of the three national credit bureaus, serving the company’s first-ever Head of Global Procurement.

Prior to that, he spent 15 years at HSBC holding a variety of senior management positions in risk and procurement.

You can’t meet today’s challenges with yesterday’s supplier intelligence Learn the most effective strategies for helping your business withstand longer-term supply chain disruption and manage supplier risks with the most comprehensive data available.

Discover our continuously updated data ›

segnellahc s’yadot teem t’nac uoY ecnegilletni reilppus s’yadretsey htiw gnipleh rof seigetarts evit cef fe tsom eht nraeL niahc ylppus mret-regnol dnatshtiw ssenisub ruoy Dun & Bradstreet and TransUnion Dun & Bradstreet/ tsom eh t htiw sksir reilppus eganam dna noitpursid TransUnion: Understanding Dun & Bradstreet and TransUnion have a long history “We’ve .elba liavofa working atad together. evisne herbeen pmoc risk and opportunity Dun & Bradstreet’s Brian Farley discusses the company’s long-standing relationship with TransUnion and what sets their it apart from others Founded in 1841, Dun & Bradstreet has been helping its customers understand risk and opportunities in business for nearly two centuries. As a provider of data and analytics, the company serves its customers by collecting information on a global scale about hundreds of millions of different business locations worldwide. “At Dun & Bradstreet, we are known for providing commercial insight,” says Brian Farley, Vice President and Business Segment Manager of Third-Party Risk and Compliance at Dun & Bradstreet.

“Two of our biggest operating areas are ownership information and financial risk. With the information we gather, we are able to provide predictive indicators and describe the future behaviours of businesses worldwide.”

mutual customers, as well as mutual suppliers for decades. Our services complement each other, with TransUnion focusing on consumer financial behaviours and Dun & Bradstreet focusing on commercial behaviours. Our history has really been about addressing specific customer problems by linking our expertise.”

ylsuounitnoc ruo revocsiD Two key areas where› Dun and ata&dBradstreet detad pu TransUnion are working together include fraud and micro-businesses. “Combining both Dun & Bradstreet’s and TransUnion’s data, we are using information to develop a strong picture of not only the business entity, but also individuals associated with the business to mitigate commercial fraud and misrepresentation of identity,” says Farley.

“We have also been working together on a broader area – micro-businesses. This is a trend that is accelerating in our market in the wake of COVID-19; there has been a significant rise in remote working and freelance workers,” he adds. “This new approach to the working model has created these micro-businesses and this is where we are working with TransUnion to combine our mutual strengths to gain a greater understanding of these businesses and how they behave in the marketplace.”

TRANS UNION

DID YOU KNOW...

NAVIGATING COVID-19 RELATED DISRUPTION AT TRANSUNION

10

When it comes to navigating disruption, Ascolani explains that much of it comes down to communication.

“A lot of it is keeping tabs on all vendors that provide our strategic products and services, as well as communicating any timeline changes internally. This communication allows all stakeholders to understand the dynamics of the industry and plan accordingly,” explains Ascolani.

Initially when COVID-19 hit, it was ‘all hands on deck’ for TransUnion. “We had key third parties that supported our business that couldn’t go into the office and didn’t have work-from-home capabilities,” says Ascolani.

“We helped get laptops to many places all over the world where we had workers.

We also had one staff member physically drive out of state – Chicago, Illinois – to

transunion.com

Iowa in search of masks and hand sanitiser that could be brought back to our home office. And in order to ensure that we had safe on-site meetings, we supplied testing kits for our staff.

“So, initially, it was this collaborative allhands-on-deck effort as there was not a great playbook for an event such as this; we didn’t have processes in place for this level of global disruption in the supply chain - you would never think that you would actually be living through something like this.”

Having good relationships with vendors and stakeholders, TU Procure were able to provide throughout the pandemic and mitigate the issues that arose as best as they could. “We also managed to successfully implement a custom portal for our staff to order the equipment they needed from home to continue to operate,” says Ascolani.

TRANS UNION

“ TU Procure, our internally rebranded global procurement team acts as a centre of excellence for organisations, providing them with a control point to make sure that their stakeholders are getting the best market rates, and the most up to date product and service offerings” DAMON ASCOLANI

HEAD OF GLOBAL PROCUREMENT, TRANS UNION

The need for CEO mandates in procurement “I always say: you would never review a contract from a legal perspective without sending it to your legal department, so why wouldn’t the same apply to procurement for the commercial terms?” says Ascolani.

Procurement is a hard function to integrate throughout an organisation without having topdown mandates. TU Procure, the company's internally rebranded global procurement team acts as a centre of excellence for organisations, providing them with a control point to make sure that their stakeholders are getting the best market rates, and the most up to date product and service offerings. “We drive that discussion when it comes to supplier management and assessment. As companies grow, the economic benefits and the risk management benefits of a mature procurement organisation become increasingly vital.”

transunion.com

11

“ At TransUnion, we help organisations to navigate the noise, aggregating that data into manageable and insightful reports” DAMON ASCOLANI

HEAD OF GLOBAL PROCUREMENT, TRANS UNION

12

transunion.com

What makes data management critical to procurement When it comes down to being successful or unsuccessful in procurement, quality data is at its core. Whether it's understanding cost savings, predicting demand or managing suppliers, data management is critical.

“An organisation can have multiple vendor relationships for a single toolset and central visibility that procurement reporting provides is the key to ensuring tail spend is well managed and vendor synergies achieved in M&A scenarios,” says Ascolani.

TRANS UNION

“At TransUnion, we help organisations to navigate the noise, aggregating that data into manageable and insightful reports. This is also important for our own supplier diversity reporting at TransUnion.

He adds: “We have a robust process for analysing our data and classifying it, so in order to make an impact, we have to be able to report against a baseline and if you don’t have good analytics, then that can’t happen.

Particularly in a growing organisation, you can quickly lose sight of third-party spend, so bringing stability to that and providing reporting is valuable to the decision-making process.”

DID YOU KNOW...

TRANSUNION AND ITS RELATIONSHIPS Critical to the success of any organisation, particularly when it comes to large-scale initiatives, TransUnion values its relationships. The company selects its relations based on their dedication to the long-term goal: the art of what is possible over time, not just the quick wins. TransUnion looks for relations with those that are innovative and will grow with the organisation.

“We have a cloud initiative, a global business system and a customer interaction tool set that we internally call ‘Project Illuminate’ that we are working on,” explains Ascolani.

“In order to successfully implement projects like these – especially global ones – you need to have strong relationships with the providers that assist you in that implementation. In my team, we have expanded multiple aspects of our procurement function. One in particular is our risk analytics capabilities, where we have just begun an automation project with the

help of Dun and Bradstreet. We went through an extensive sourcing exercise to select them, and we are very excited to be able to better screen our vendors, customers, and other third party relationships.”

Another relationship for TransUnion is Slalom, which helps it from a staffing perspective for a number of critical projects. “Their skillset pairs well with our culture and environment. They understand what we are trying to do and provide us the resources to get us there quickly,” says Ascolani.

“We also have a strong relationship with Salesforce, who support our customer journey from a business customer perspective and with whom we have a long-standing relationship. And then we have Coupa Software, our procure-topay (P2P) tool, which transformed us from a spreadsheet-based, manual processdriven organisation into a more structured, cloud-based organisation for our analytics and sourcing.”

transunion.com

13

TRANS UNION

14

transunion.com

Realising procurement savings and added value A common struggle for many in procurement is the calculation of savings and value, as well as realising it in a way that people can really feel the benefits. “Every conference I go to, this is always a topic,” says Ascolani.

“It is not always a straightforward proposition, especially in a rapidly growing organisation such as ours, but I find that being able to realise savings so that they are felt comes down to an organisation's relationship with the finance team and stakeholders. Procurement’s value add to an organisation goes well beyond budgetary savings, but oftentimes, this type of savings is the one that feels most real to budget owners and stakeholders. So regardless of your savings methodology, tying it to the budget is key. Once you’ve established the budgetary savings with validation by your finance team, it is much easier to champion the other aspects of the value that procurement provides such as cost avoidance and tail spend management. This is critical so that all aspects of the procurement teams’ value to the organisation are recognised.”

TransUnion over the next 12 to 18 months Over the next 12 to 18 months, TransUnion will be heavily focused on navigating the complex activities that follow M&A activity. “We’ve conducted a fair amount of acquisitions and divestitures, so there is a lot of work to be done to navigate the challenges of these activities,” says Ascolani.

“But we’re up for the challenge! It’s an exciting time – there is a lot to do, we are leveraging a lot of strategic relationships during this time – and, had we not had these relationships, this process would have been significantly more difficult.

“So the next 12 to 18 months will include merging the organisations that we bought under a single, common operating model, as well as further navigating recovery from COVID-19.”

transunion.com

15

555 West Adams Street Chicago, IL 60661 T 312-985-2000 www.transunion.com

POWERED BY:

POWERED BY: