How Hershey’s is Kissing Overpayments Goodbye

“It’s a project with an infinite internal rate of return,” says Sanjay Singh, Hershey’s VP of Internal Audit. “How many dollars of chocolate would we have to sell to equal a million in recoveries?”

He knew that a recovery audit was a good idea from his experience and the benchmarking he does with industry peers.  He, Jay Cheedella, VP Global Business Services, and Jonathan Laubenstine, Senior Director of Internal Audit, have been overseeing the project that’s already added over a million dollars a year to Hershey’s bottom line. 

No headcount additions.  No budget outlay.  Money back. Control gaps revealed.

Hershey likes the apexanalytix service model because it requires very little of Hershey’s AP time and gives them a lot of insights and analytics.  Everything was agreed to up front and then apexanalytix went to work.

The details that apexanalytix gives Hershey’s on why the overpayments were made help point out control gaps.  Sanjay is practical about this. “Some gaps are difficult and expensive to close,” says Sanjay.  “The recovery audit is the filter on the back end when perfecting a control comes at a prohibitive cost. That’s okay; the recovery audit is that secondary control. We’re covered either way.”

Listen to webinar to learn:

• How Jay, Sanjay and Jonathan sold the recovery audit internally.
• Managing a recovery audit and reporting success.
• How automation, RPA, and the largest supplier database in the industry make the apexanalytix audit better.
• The value of continuous recovery audits.

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.

Jonathan B. Laubenstine
Senior Director Internal Audit, The Hershey Company

Jonathan is Senior Director Internal Audit and has over 15 years of progressive audit experience

providing attestation, assurance, and advisory services across each of Hershey’s global business units, systems and processes. 

During his tenure, Jonathan has had experience and responsibility for managing the entire spectrum of Internal Audit’s scope including financial, operational, IT, Sarbanes Oxley, and compliance audits as well as designing/implementing the strategy for Internal Audit’s data analytics, controls automation, and advisory service offerings.

Jonathan has served as a key resource managing numerous domestic and international initiatives including the implementation of SAP GRC Process Control, go-live readiness assessments for all implementations included in Hershey’s ERP transformation and data center migration, control design for Hershey’s Global Trading Company, controls advisory for the Global Supply Chain Transformation, control integration for Amplify, global distributor management capability enhancements, international import export compliance assessments, serving as the Finance lead for the Enterprise Risk Management Program Office, and various special projects.

Jonathan is currently responsible for creating and delivering the annual Internal Audit plan, continuing to advance the data analytics and continuous monitoring capabilities of the Internal Audit Department, advancing controls automation across the Company, leading control design and go-live assessments for the S/4 HANA implementation, and developing a high performing Internal Audit team.

Jon graduated from Lebanon Valley College with a bachelor’s in accounting and a master’s in business administration. He is also a Certified Public Accountant and Certified Fraud Examiner.

Sanjay Singh
Vice President, Internal Audit, The Hershey Company

Sanjay Singh is currently the Vice President, Internal Audit, for The Hershey Company.  In this capacity, he is responsible for all aspects of the Internal Audit function, reporting to the Chairman of the Audit Committee of The Hershey Company Board of Directors.

Sanjay has more than 25 years of experience as a Finance leader with increasing responsibility at a diverse group of large, multinational companies.  He has worked across a broad spectrum of markets in Asia, Europe and Latin America.  He lived in India for 27 years.

Prior to his current role, Sanjay was the Vice President of Internal Audit at Ryder System in Miami from 2015 to 2018.  Prior to Ryder, he served as the Vice President of Internal Audit at Starbucks from 2010 to 2015 and before that at Dollar Tree Stores for five years.  He has also held Finance leadership roles at OfficeMax/Boise Cascade, and sales/marketing/product development roles at Xerox India and at ITC India. 

Mr. Singh earned a Bachelor of Commerce degree from St. Xavier’s College at the University of Calcutta (India), a Master of Accountancy from Washington State University and a MBA from Georgia Southern University.

Phil Beane
Senior Vice President, Global Field Operations, APEX Analytix

As senior vice president, global field operations, Phil leads our commercial and retail audit teams and our international operations. His focus is on ensuring the highest level of customer satisfaction and value creation, which has helped to fuel a period of double-digit growth. He was previously responsible for leading our audit and software implementation support teams in the Americas.

Prior to joining APEX Analytix in 2004, Phil 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 proudly in the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division as a Communications Specialist.