A leading pharmaceutical retailer was grappling with suspected payroll fraud across its large base of employees. Leveraging KPI DataBridge Suite and its Data Products Accelerator, the organization uncovered ghosting patterns, delivering a projected 1,000% ROI in year one.

 

Faced with growing concerns of payroll fraud, this Fortune 500 pharmaceutical retailer partnered with KPI Partners to modernize their fraud detection practices. The organization needed to replace inefficient manual investigations with a scalable, secure, and automated system capable of integrating disparate HR and access data sources.

 

The deployment of Pay Fraud Analytics via the KPI DataBridge Suite and its supporting Data Products Accelerator enabled the company to transition from fragmented, error-prone workflows to real-time, actionable insights — resulting in rapid ROI and operational transparency.

 

Download the Extended Case Study (.pdf)

 

Business Drivers

Fraudulent Pay Practices:

Ghost employees were suspected of drawing salaries without proof of presence or access.

Inefficient Manual Processes:

More than 40 hours per month were spent on inconclusive, manual investigations.

Siloed Systems:

HR records, badge logs, system access data, and timesheets were fragmented across multiple platforms.

Compliance & Security Pressure:

Strict governance requirements necessitated the secure handling of sensitive employee data.

Download the Extended Case Study (.pdf)

Results

ROI: 1000%

Detected ghosting fraud patterns provided financial recoveries exceeding the implementation investment tenfold in year one.

Payback Period: 1 month

Rapid identification of fraud resulted in immediate financial savings, covering project costs within weeks.

Monitoring: 100K+

Scalable architecture allowed comprehensive analysis across all employee records without sacrificing performance.

Resources Added: Zero

Business users accessed clear, automated fraud insights without additional technical training or specialized resources.

Manual Analysis: 90%

A 90% reduction in manual analysis hours freed HR and compliance teams from repetitive data processing, allowing them to focus on higher-value activities.

Encryption: --------

All sensitive employee data was encrypted in transit and at rest, maintaining compliance and data trust.

Download the Extended Case Study (.pdf)

Solution

KPI Partners implemented Pay Fraud Analytics on Google Cloud Platform (using Google BigQuery and Google Composer, enabling secure, cloud-based integration of HR and timesheet from Workday with other system storage for badge access and login data. The Data Products Accelerator and the Workday to Google Cloud Platform Utility were further enhanced to use advanced identity matching and behavior modeling to identify ghosting patterns.

• Automated ingestion and correlation of cross-system identity data
• End-to-end encryption in transit and at rest
• Cloud-agnostic framework, compatible with Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Microsoft Azure
• Auto-generated fraud alerts and reports for business users
• Completed implementation in 5 months

Download the Extended Case Study (.pdf)

Technology

• Workday HR
• KPI DataBridge Suite - Data Products Accelerator
• Spark
• GCP - Google Cloud Platform
• Google BigQuery
• Google Composer
• Tableau
• AWS
• Azure
  

Download the Extended Case Study (.pdf)

Architecture

Download the Extended Case Study (.pdf)

Next Steps

Following the success of this initiative, the client is exploring additional use cases for workforce analytics and fraud detection. Pay Fraud Analytics is now being evaluated for expanded deployment across other operational risk areas, including vendor fraud, overtime abuse, and compliance monitoring.

Download the Extended Case Study (.pdf)

“This solution didn’t just catch fraud — it changed the way we think about operational risk and workforce accountability.”

— Senior HR Compliance Leader

Key Outcomes

• The organization transitioned from reactive fraud detection to a proactive, sustainable model.
• Business leaders gained immediate, trusted insight into anomalies without burdening IT or requiring deep analytics skills.
• Trust was restored across departments through unified, transparent reporting.

Download the Extended Case Study (.pdf)

Why KPI?

• Data Products Accelerator, part of the KPI DataBridge Suite  delivered a complete pre-built analytics application including pre-built ETL, data models, metrics, dashboards, reports, and visualizations.
• Proven expertise in workforce analytics and fraud detection
• Flexibility to deliver cloud-agnostic solutions across AWS, Azure, and GCP
• Deep understanding of compliance-sensitive architectures in healthcare

About KPI Partners

KPI Partners is a global strategic partner for Analytics and Digital Transformation solutions, delivering advanced capabilities in Data Science, GenAI, AI/ML, Cloud Databases, Data Engineering, Analytics & Visualization, and DevOps/DevSecOps/MLOps.

Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Newark, California, KPI Partners supports a wide range of clients, including several Fortune 500 companies across industries such as high-tech, retail, CPG, financial services, insurance, manufacturing, and life sciences. Recognized by Gartner, the company has completed over 1000 successful projects for more than 300 clients.

With a global team of 600+ consultants located across North America, Latin America, and India, KPI Partners offers deep industry expertise and broad delivery capabilities. Offices are located in Silicon Valley (HQ), Boston, New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Guadalajara (Mexico), Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Pune.

www.kpipartners.com