"Up to now our company had automated the posting of the electronic bank statements to a certain degree by using customizing and programming in SAP.
In 2019 the business identified requirements for additional automation:
Due to the Dutch “Wet Keten Aansprakelijkheid” we receive a lot of split customer payments, partially on our normal account and partially on the blocked “g-account”. This has always been a pain point when we tried to automate this ourselves, also caused by the various ways in how our customers split invoices, and sometimes pay the amounts in collective payments. Although this methodology was new for BPI they managed to successfully find ways to implement it in standard EBS Workbench.
After a short period of analyzing and setting up templates, we went live for several company codes in NL.
Now we have reached a level of >90% automation, and we are still working on improvements to even achieve a higher level.
Besides this, the handling of payment advices is far more efficient and the use of lookup-tables avoids other postings in the accounting department (first time right).
EBS Workbench is a tool which is easy to use, gives a lot of valuable reporting about the reconciliation process and is easy to adjust by end users so we don’t have to bother IT with change requests any more.
We are very happy with the tool and the very pleasant cooperation and professional advice during the implementation period."
Process Expert Finance - Technical Service Provider, Netherlands*
*)Due to company policy of the customer, name and company cannot be published on this page, but we will be happy to arrange a bilateral contact with the responsible contact person of the customer.
"We already had used a SAP-integrated add-on solution for bank statement processing for years. Due to the termination of the provider's maintenance contract and the changeover to a rental model, we had to look at and evaluate this topic completely again. After presentations by several providers in our company, the decision was unanimously made to change over to EBS Workbench from BPI.
Already during the first presentation we were shown how easy and understandable the system is structured.
During the installation of the program by our IT department, we already analyzed our bank transactions using the preparation program provided by BPI. In a workshop we received a short training for EBS Workbench and then, based on our analysis, we started to create templates and filters under guidance.
The successful go-live was carried out online with BPI, so that we immediately started to take a closer look at the bookings.
Additional company codes are now being implemented successively and independently by the finance department.
A second SAP system was connected by our internal IT alone and the rollout for the first international company code could also be carried out independently by the finance department.
We are very pleased to have found a good bank statement processing tool with easy operation and understandable structures! Thank you very much for the great customer service! "
Accounts Receivable, Corporate Unit Finance, Phoenix Contact GmbH & Co. KG
*This customer quote was translated into english based on the original german version
“When starting our Electronic Receipt Matching endeavor, we had some concerns regarding the automation rate and how successful the project would be at the end.
Our first positive experience was when BPI analyzed our bank statement data and we saw that almost 100% of all our bank statement line items could be recognized by the Workbench. After this external analysis, we were able to continue enriching the analysis data by ourselves. During this time, we received professional guidance from BPI, which gradually brought us closer to the final implementation. In our key user training, we quickly realized that most of the work was already completed in the preparation phase. The training was, however, crucial to understand system behavior. Even if at first the Workbench looked overwhelming with all its functionalities, we got used to it within just a few days. We can now maintain our rules ourselves in a confident manner.
This project was very successful in the EMEA region. We reached 75-90% of automation already on the first day.
The whole project team has done a great job despite all current restrictions for face-to-face meetings. The analysis, preparation, implementation, training and go-live was done exclusively by remote work from all participants.”
Peter Kiss - Global AP & AR Process Owner - INEOS Styrolution Group GmbH
“National Bank of Greece implemented SAP Cash Management and BPI EBS Workbench for Bank Statement Automation to improve global Cash Visibility and controls for NBG’s Nostro bank accounts managed in SAP. The project delivered an integrated solution on time and budget which allows NBG to leverage the rich data content received on bank statements and interfaces to perform various controls and reporting analysis in one System.
We see EBS Workbench as one enabler for us to improve our Cash Visibility for all bank accounts managed in SAP. Bank statement data is provided via our SWIFT interface and loading is automated in SAP for NBG’s Nostro bank accounts held at partner banks in all time-zones.
EBS Workbench performs automatic matching with planned cash flows based on sophisticated and flexible clearing rules. The user-friendly EBS Workbench allows that unmatched items can easily be processed by our Cash Management Team.
Manual matches performed by our team creates reporting data that allows us to continuously improve the interfaces that deliver the planned cash flows. This loop will in return reduce manual work for our Team allowing even more time for data analysis and planning.
It was a pleasure to work with our consulting partners Aspire, our internal IT and BPI and we are very satisfied with the solution provided.”
Thanasis Papadopoulos, Assistant Treasurer - Group Liquidity Monitoring & Funds Allocation at National Bank of Greece
“EBS Workbench has brought us exactly what we were looking for, namely a tool that supports Tilburg University to achieve a higher degree of automation for financial accounting in SAP.
Our interest in EBS Workbench was triggered after we had seen it working at another company. When after an extensive tendering process BPI’s solution came out as the best, the choice was quickly made. Thanks to a very pleasant cooperation, we were able to implement EBS Workbench within one month and since then 85% of our bank transactions are processed automatically.
The use of EBS Workbench has also enabled us to take a critical look at our internal administrative processes in order to determine how they can be improved. In addition, the embedded KPI reports within EBS Workbench gives us the insights to continuously automate accounting entries. Because EBS Workbench is very user-friendly we can change or add posting templates ourselves without needing the support of the BPI team. This of course saves both time and money.
We are very happy with the guided implementation approach, training and support of BPI.
Drs. Clementine Lichtenberg, Head of Finance Service Center at Tilburg University, The Netherlands”
"Continuous Improvement (CI): think big, start small and upscale fast!
As part of our Continuous Improvement journey at Universiteit Leiden, we were looking for a solution to accelerate our Cash Application in SAP. We have chosen for EBS Workbench because my team was very enthusiastic after seeing the tailor made demo that was prepared by BPI. After a successful proof of concept covering 2 bank accounts in the first week, we then rolled out the solution in 3 waves. Within 1 month we analyzed the transactions, tested them and went live in EBS Workbench with 39 bank accounts achieving an automation rate of > 95%!
This is the next step we have taken in our Continuous Improvement journey, where we made bank processing a lot more efficient. Using EBS Workbench we converted the repetitive, uninspiring and error-prone manual work into high quality robotic automation.”
“We gained an easy to manage tool, that can be adjusted by the end-users instead of IT-maintenance. After learning how easy it was to make rules and adjust them in EBS Workbench, our processing time is brought to an absolute minimum. The tool gives us much more time to improve our work and the users within the FSSC are very enthusiastic about the many possibilities and the user-friendliness of the tool.”
Rob van den Wijngaard, Director FSSC at Universiteit Leiden
Arjan van Rijn, Teamlead Liquidity Management FSSC at Universiteit Leiden
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