How Alaska Airlines is Fixing Errors Caused by M&A

Large scale M&A creates a lot of work for finance teams. Everyone gets busy. Systems need to get consolidated, vendor masters merged, suppliers communicated to, and so on.

When everyone is busy, a common project that gets postponed or cancelled is a recovery audit. At Alaska Airlines, it fell off the to-do list for several years.

“I didn’t think apexanalytix was going to find much, but knew some mistakes were made during the merger period,” said Lori Foley, Director, Customer & Vendor Payments at Alaska Airlines. “Pretty quickly in the audit, we started seeing recoveries from warranties and rebates. Activities we didn’t have visibility to.”

Like most other companies, Alaska saw that the mistakes were happening outside AP. And the audit provided the necessary data to close the gaps through technology or periodic cross-departmental reviews of known issues.

If you have postponed an audit or just haven’t had one in years, this webinar will provide you with the reasons why you should have one every year – from the perspective of someone who has postponed it before.

Join the webinar for Lori to discuss:

• Best time to get IT resources for projects
• What happens outside AP, stays outside AP
• The Deployment Spike
• A case for an annual recovery audit
• Addressing control gaps with new tech: CLM, eProcurement, eSettlement

Mark Brousseau
President, Brousseau & Associates 

Over the past 26 years, Mark Brousseau has established himself as a thought leader on accounts payable, accounts receivable, payments and document automation.   A popular speaker at industry conferences and on webinars and podcasts, Brousseau advises prominent end-users and solutions and services providers on how to use automation to improve document- and payments-driven business processes.  Brousseau has chaired numerous educational conferences and has served on several industry committees and boards.  He resides in Center City Philadelphia with his wife and three sons.

Lori Foley
Director, Customer & Vendor Payments, Alaska Airlines

Lori Foley has over 25 years of finance experience in the airline industry and currently serves as the Director of Customer & Vendor Payments at Alaska Airlines. Prior to Alaska Airlines, she was in numerous finance roles for Virgin America and American Airlines. She has a bachelor’s degree from The University of Texas at Dallas and is a certified public accountant.

Phil Beane
Senior Vice President, Global Field Operations, apexanalytix

As senior vice president of global field operations, Phil Beane leads our commercial and retail audit teams and international operations. His focus on customer satisfaction and value creation has helped to fuel a period of double-digit growth.

Phil previously was responsible for leading the apexanalytix audit and software implementation support teams in the Americas. Prior to joining the company, he worked with GMAC Insurance, Questcon Technologies and BCE Emergis, where he specialized in quality assurance consulting and management. Phil graduated from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with a degree in information systems. He also served in the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division as a communications specialist.