When Dallas-based diversified railcar and barge maker Trinity Industries (TRN) decided to revamp its Financial and Accounting (F&A) works, it boldly decided to involve a reliable Business Process Outsource firm and offloaded much of its finance management and accounting work to Outsource Partners International, Inc., a leading BPO outfit specializing in finance and accounting services.

For OPI it was a daunting challenge because NYSE-listed TRN Corporation had no sophisticated ERP system in place. Moreover, with twenty-two business units located across the US following 17 different accounting systems, OPI’s real challenge was to integrate the totality of operations and localize them.

When Jim Ivy joined TRN as CFO and Senior Vice President in 1998, he realized the need to upgrade the company’s antiquated accounting practices. But given the fairly complex nature of accounts consolidation, he initially dismissed the idea to outsource the F&A work to a BPO firm. Ivy, who is retiring this year, was the principal advocate and architect of Trinity’s F&A outsourcing strategy.

It is notable that outsourcing of financial and accounting services was not popular in those days. In that sense, TRN pioneered to create a new culture of outsourcing financial and accounting works from outsiders.

Generally, companies outsource a few accounting and finance functions or modules, such as accounts receivables, accounts payables and fixed asset accounting. But Trinity delved farther by outsourcing general ledger, payroll, billing, accounts receivables, accounts payables, fixed asset accounting, and even accounts consolidation.