With offices spanning 7 countries and 3 continents, United Language Group (ULG) is the world’s largest and most innovative translation, localization, and interpreting providers, and their mission is to build “a world in which language is no longer a barrier.”

ULG’s services are powered by over 10,000 highly skilled linguists that stay at the forefront of location and cultural trends while seeking out the most efficient ways to blend human and machine expertise.

And ULG does all this in the name of “True North”—the highest ideal a company can reach and the persistent practice of daily improvement, in all aspects of business.

For Toni Tornell, ULG’s Controller, “True North” was fixing their broken Accounts Payable process. When Tornell started with ULG in 2016, the company had just purchased an interpretation business in California. With this acquisition, they now had six different entities operating all over the world.

We had been struggling with AP for a year and a half—it was a manual process. We needed it to be more efficient, and we wanted a partner that could help us with international and early payments.

Additionally, ULG was quickly and consistently adding a vast amount of linguists to their network. They needed a solution that could ease the woes of onboarding and alleviate the unnecessary issues of an inefficient payments process.

Enter: Tipalti.

Before Tipalti, the process was painful—it took up to 15 days to close the books. Now, processes that used to take our team 1-2 weeks are being completed in 1-2 days.

And ULG isn’t adding any additional headcount to manage their extensive growth. They started with an AP team of three, and that’s what they’re sticking to. As Tornell states, “Our goal is to be one of the top 10 largest language service providers in the world—without adding more finance people.”

With Tipalti, they are able to accomplish this. Initially, ULG had a one-month payment cycle for paying their interpreters and translators, but it was too convoluted. Their vendors wanted to be paid in multiple payment methods including ACH, wire transfers, and even paper checks, and the only “True North” solution was automation.

Tipalti helped us pay our vendors all over the world and saved us money with early payment offers.

Currently, ULG has all of their translators registered in Tipalti—an easy process that takes their payees only five minutes to set-up. Plus, they are able to efficiently pay their vendors in their preferred payment methods and currencies—once a maligned process that Tipalti manages now.

For Tornell, the results were significant, and Tipalti’s cloud-based infrastructure allowed for much greater visibility. “We can access Tipalti from anywhere. We have all our entities in one place.”

So what’s the future for ULG? It’s all about disrupting the status quo, working to improve daily, and fighting complacent thinking. As Tornell states, “Be open to change. It’s important to learn new systems and move towards automation.”

And for AP?

“Complete relief—we save so much more time now. We’re definitely scaling with Tipalti.”

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