When Ming Lee stepped onto the stage at Appian’s European conference in London last week, he opened with a light-hearted nod to recent headlines, expressing hope that his presentation on finance transformation at Jaguar Land Rover would be better received than its much-discussed brand relaunch.
Last month, the UK carmaker initiated the most significant shift in its 102-year history, unveiling a new logo and a “social media tease” as part of its transition to an all-electric brand. However, critics dismissed the campaign as “woke”, noting the absence of any actual cars.
Earlier this month, JLR also revealed its new EV concept, the Type 00, at the Miami Art Fair. The car’s bold colours—shocking pink and electric blue—sparked further debate.
Though JLR’s finance transformation director wasn’t there to defend the brand’s strategy, he noted that exclusivity requires a focus on target customers, not universal appeal.
“This is an ambitious strategy. Some people love it, and some people hate it, but the world is changing to a point that no change equals no future for us,” said Lee, JLR’s director of finance.
Lee told conference delegates how JLR is heavily investing in electrification and automation with a goal of zero carbon emissions by 2039 as part of its wider transformation plan.
According to Lee, his department is central to the car maker’s transformation into a brand that will attract a new generation of eco-conscious, high-net-worth individuals.
“The finance department sees the end-to-end value creation system: every action has a transaction that we record and report; every plan needs a business case. Every strategy needs to be funded and financed.
“So, finance is key. As director of finance, I’m focussed on process excellence and creating data assets which are analytics and AI-ready,” he explained.
Central to this journey, said Lee, was the part of the business that used to take care of delivering business strategy and compliance – which, he added, used to be “a back office shared service centre in a low-cost country”.
This “finance digital core” has now been transformed into a technology hub populated by process and data experts focused on “standardising and automating global processes through technology, data management and analytics,” Lee added.
In terms of technology partners, one key vendor is Appian, Lee added, and the process automation firm has most recently been helping the carmaker with processes around improving and negotiating changes to its material costs.
“The system was designed 20 years ago and has grown over time with lots of technologies being added through purchasing and finance organisations.
“We’ve been trying to automate tasks as opposed to designing end-to-end processes in a coordinated way. It used to be very manual – a Frankenstein process that did not really fit together,” he said.
He added that many organisations ended up with such beasts: “If you focus on task automation you will get an awkward process that doesn’t integrate or connect,” Lee observed.
However, two weeks ago JLR finished integrating an Appian solution that connects all these different processes into a single system, improving the user experience and outcomes and creating a single source of truth.
“We’ve moved from a fragmented process and disparate systems to an end-to-end curated and connected process in a single system,” he added.
Lee also outlined how Appian helped JLR streamline supply chain sourcing post-Brexit and during the Covid-19 pandemic by providing a unified low-code platform to manage complex processes.
By integrating data from disparate systems, Process HQ enabled a real-time view of supply chain operations, enabling JLR to track parts, suppliers, and compliance with post-Brexit regulations efficiently.
“Whatever your politics, Brexit was a pain for us. We had to import £8 billion worth of parts from Europe into the UK to keep our manufacturing plants running,” he told delegates.
“Appian’s solution has helped us mine that data to help us create a really good robust way to understand what was happening and how we could make it better,” he added.
This was achieved by enabling the carmaker to coordinate the supplier, courier, and broker documentation so that it could manage that process in a streamlined and automated way, outlined Lee.
“We used to have 250 people manually working on this process, and now we have less than 100 and we are looking at reducing this further.”
According to Lee, JLR has also started a fixed assets management lifecycle system which is a process designed to oversee and manage physical assets—be it machinery, tools, vehicles, and facilities—throughout their lifecycle.
This system claims to ensure efficient utilisation, cost management, and compliance with regulatory standards.
“Previously the data that manufacturing, purchasing and finance we were holding was in Excel spreadsheets and we couldn’t align our data, resulting in a capitalisation backlog of £1.1billion,” he said. “The Appian solution will make that flow continuous and avoid Excel and backlogs going forward.”
Lee pointed out that aligning the manufacturing maintenance schedule and the finance asset register has also given JLR finance the opportunity to remove finance asset verification from the process that JLR used to run on a cyclical basis every three years.
“Again, another huge efficiency through collaboration,” he added.
Using the same Appian system Lee said that the department has also started a process that aids the circular economy internally, by creating an internet e-commerce marketplace to see what parts are available for reuse to avoid spending more money on new versions of things that the organisation already has.
Lee wrapped up by pointing out that automating all these processes and creating a single source of truth set the organisation up for AI experimentation. “We’ve created some great opportunities that will create great data assets that will then allow us to explore AI opportunities,” he said.
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