About Wolverine Worldwide

Wolverine Worldwide is a leading designer, marketer and licensor of a broad range of quality casual footwear and apparel, performance outdoor and athletic footwear and apparel, children’s footwear, industrial work boots and apparel, and uniform shoes and boots. With a global footprint spanning approximately 200 countries, the company’s well-known brands include Merrell, Sperry, Saucony and Wolverine.

Life before a treasury management solution

The Wolverine Worldwide treasury team is centralized in Rockford, Michigan, with additional finance personnel located around the world. This team manages the company’s cash and debt positions, as well as its foreign exchange hedging program, historically performed through manual processes, including spreadsheets and online banking portals. This lack of automation meant the treasury team spent significant time on manual, transactional processes rather than focusing on higher-value, strategic initiatives.

In 2016, Wolverine Worldwide decided to automate these manual processes by identifying and implementing a treasury management system. Key business requirements included cash management, risk management, hedge accounting, global bank connectivity and bank account administration.

Why SaaS?

The software-as-a-service (SaaS) technology deployment and associated service offerings attracted Wolverine Worldwide for several reasons. The company liked the affordability of a SaaS solution and the simplified consumption of technology, from delivery through support. The FIS SaaS deployment streamlined the upgrade process and greatly simplified the overall system maintenance efforts. FIS could manage the environment and upgrade process without involving the company’s treasury or IT functions for reconfiguration or testing. With a SaaS deployment, Wolverine Worldwide could remain on the latest version of the treasury platform, which not only reduces maintenance costs and effort, but also helps the team take advantage of the newest features within the solution immediately.

The project

Wolverine Worldwide started down the path with an alternative provider of treasury technology in 2017 but had to stop the project after discovering that the system would not be supported in the long term. This forced the reconsideration of several of the treasury technology solutions available. It also meant the team would be closely scrutinizing the commitment of the treasury technology vendor in supporting the product for the long term.

Ultimately, Wolverine Worldwide selected FIS Treasury and Risk Manager – Integrity Edition (formerly Integrity SaaS). The solution met the treasury team’s functional requirements, was considered user-friendly and met or exceeded SaaS requirements, including those related to cost, security and compliance. Implementation, support and customer service experience gave the treasury team confidence in FIS’ ability to deliver and maintain the solution. In addition, the treasury team trusted the feedback it received from the treasury community, which supported a strong implementation methodology and a dedicated customer service team. Ultimately, FIS’ organizational stability and experience matched closely with Wolverine Worldwide’s desire for the most secure, trusted cloud environment available in the market.

The results

Through this implementation, Wolverine Worldwide has automated several of its previously manual processes, which has improved operational efficiencies and reduced risk. The implementation has greatly simplified the global cash positioning process, utilizing SWIFT connectivity to automate the collection of bank balances. Additionally, the company has benefited from an automated interface from Treasury and Risk Manager – Integrity Edition to its enterprise resource planning for automated general ledger posting.

By choosing to deploy a SaaS solution, the treasury team can stay on the latest version of the software, enabling it to use the latest functionality without interrupting operations in the form of a major upgrade. The company also has dedicated, knowledgeable support personnel at FIS, who manage the application and the infrastructure, thereby reducing the team’s dependence on its busy IT staff. Wolverine Worldwide will continue to improve its treasury operations with the use of Treasury and Risk Manager – Integrity Edition and plans to implement a more advanced foreign exchange risk management and hedge accounting functionality.