Connecting Multiple ERPs

Fides provides multibank account statement, payment workflow and reporting capabilities for more than 4,000 treasury and finance teams. There is a common thread that runs throughout these success stories: corporates choose Fides because they want to improve cash visibility, reduce risk, increase security, and increase business efficiency through automation. However, their use cases and scenarios can be very different.

At Fides, we take pride in the flexibility our solutions bring to the table. Whether you choose to use Fides ONEHub as a standalone solution, or connect to a TMS or ERP, we can provide the optimal connectivity. And we aren’t limited to just one connection.

Here’s an example of how we helped one customer centralize and standardize its bank communications across all its subsidiaries with multiple ERP connections.

This large, global company faced some unique challenges. While the business had standardized on SWIFT Alliance2Lite for its bank communications, each subsidiary used its own choice of ERP system. This resulted in different processes and standards for creating and transmitting bank files.

Files would be deposited in shared folders at the server level, then picked up by a treasury management system, converted, and sent to an ERP system to then be delivered to the banks. In some cases, there was a direct VPN to the bank from the ERP. In others, there was an SFTP connection. Further complicating matters, the organization also needed support for a completely different file format for trade automation messages.

These decentralized processes made it challenging for treasury to get the cash visibility it needed, and also increased both financial and operational risk. There were multiple points where files could be accessed without having a secure, governed signoff process in place — and the lack of standardization in formats led to additional time required for manual file conversions.

Security was another concern. With the existing processes for issuing and transmit files to banks, there were many potential vulnerabilities. Files weren’t encrypted, credentials were shared on servers, and there were multiple points at which files could potentially be compromised. But the company simply didn’t have the IT resources to dedicate to installation, maintenance, improvements, and continuing expertise on the latest SWIFT requirements for security and file formatting.

Treasury was also concerned about sanction screening. Staff had to manually screen vendors, which was both time-consuming and opened up additional risk of fraud. Ideally, the company wanted to automate screening and ensure payments would be flagged upfront.

With Fides in place, the company has been able to centralize all its file transmission processes and create the structure necessary for control and comprehensive cash visibility. It has also been able to increase security and governance by leveraging Fides’ sanction screening and SWIFT security administration services. Fides takes care of SWIFT compliance requirements for everything ranging from messaging standards to RMA and CSP attestations. Fides also provides converters for MT files and ISO messages, guaranteeing that all bank communications are seamless regardless of format. This includes the MT798 routing mechanism the business needed for its trade automation messages. As a result, treasury staff have saved a significant amount of manual work time, freeing them to work on more business-critical projects.

This is the type of challenge Fides thrives on: helping customers find the best way to get the results they need.