Case Study: Canadian National Railway achieves 6% cost savings and IT cost transparency with Upland Software's ComSci

Canadian National Railway (CN Rail) partnered with Upland on its journey to complete cost transparency and cost optimization

Canadian National Railway (CN Rail), a North American transportation leader, faced unsustainable manual IT financial processes that led to frequent over-allocations, slow explanations of results, no self-serve reporting, and added complexity from planned unit-cost benchmarking. The finance team needed faster drill-downs from general ledger to IT domain, repeatable reporting, and a scalable way to measure unit costs and benchmark performance.

CN selected Upland’s ComSci as a long-term BPaaS partner rather than an implementation-only vendor. ComSci automated data processing, reporting and monthly closes, enabled GL-to-IT drilldowns and self-service dashboards, and implemented an automated transfer-pricing chargeback model with traceable audits. The solution delivered 6% cost savings in the first year and projects an additional 10% savings across years two and three.

Canadian National Railway

Jean-Francois Boudreau

Senior Manager of IT Finance