The devil is always in the detail and the daily/weekly/monthly processes. It is incredibly difficult for busy corporate treasury departments to monitor and manage bank performance and costs, and then managing and monitoring their own A/P and A/R department's performance whilst carrying out their daily processes. This is one of the almost impossible holy grails in corporate treasury. Nevertheless, the four-pronged solution from BeScord A/S might have the answer with their new BeScord Banking (BeSB) solution, see below:

 

Source & Copyright©2016 - BeScord A/S

The BeSB solution:

• provides overview of all bank and payment flows (in/out)
• records and verifies bank costs
• measures your bank performance against the agreed charges
• monitors staff compliance with payment processes and standards.

Bank cost analysis

The BeSB system extracts the data from the ERP via their ERP connectors for SAP and Microsoft AX. It also records bank invoices from customers in PDF/Excel or electronically loaded bank fee invoices in TWIST BSB or CAMT86 format to build up a full picture of the corporate's bank costs and charges.

Bank benchmarking

Bank performance is assessed BeSB which measures:

• pricing/invoice accuracy
• average transactions cost and total cost
• YoY and previous period cost comparison for trend analysis.

Minimum period for reconciliation is one month, although BeSB is able to accommodate multiple invoicing periods if required.

The BeSB solution enables users to move from feel-based to fact-based discussions with their banks on where the errors are, rather than just on the overall rebate.

Payment behaviour monitoring

The operational performance of the Accounts Payable department and the Accounts Receivable departments are monitored against the agreed company policy standards and process flows, e.g. checking whether:

• all payments made on the correct date (not early, not late)
• correct currency from the account,
• currency is paid from a non-registered bank
• non compliant user doing payments.

Overall, 10+ different alarms are constantly monitored and reported.

Bringing it all together

BeSB users have 22 different dashboards bringing the data together in different ways to monitor their performance. The cash manager’s view is shown below:

Source & Copyright©2016 -  BeScord A/S

The dashboards enable users to see not only the performance of their banks but also the performance of the internal A/R and A/P departments’s efficiency and compliance.

BeSB charges

BeSB is a subscription based service which covers all updates of received bank invoices and bank pricelists. Unusually there is no implementation fee.

The subscription is charged on a quarterly basis (in advance), with a minimum subscription period of 1 year. There is a low additional fee for adding more banks.

Implementation

Typically, the bank and corporate implementation is about one month, with most time being absorbed by setting up the bank invoices and bank price lists. Once the paper / information flow is set up, then BeSB will collect the bank invoice / price list updates once a week and perform their analysis. BeScord have found that typically customers take two days to implement the ERP connector.

Future development

Currently, BeSB measure and record each corporate’s performance/bank cost profiles separately. In the longer term, BeScord plan to develop a “Corporate versus Peers” benchmarking service, in which it will be possible for BeSB users to compare themselves anonymously with their peers in the industry.

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CTMfile take: The BeScord Banking solution brings together an unusual combination of benchmarking and control of the banks with management of internal department processes. If it works as promised, this solution could not only keep the banks up to scratch but also the A/P and A/R departments as well.