ABA Banking Journal - January 2008 - (Page 42) Tech topics grams, and overall, tended to translate into a higher cost of capital. Buyers likewise, were hampered by a lack of “cash visibility” that affected their opportunity cost of capital. How might the transition play out? First, top 20 banks will continue to expand—via the web—on service opportunities posed by broader business trends such as international trade or more efficient back office processing among corporate customers. These services enable “corporates” to more effectively leverage cash on hand. Over time, all tiers of the market will get in on the act and consolidated information about cash flows will be accessible online. Supply chain re-engineering Some experts are referring to such services as “optimizing the financial supply chain.” Broadly this means giving corporate customers better awareness of working capital and a grip on their accounting processes without the manual input, guesswork, and adjustments. First mentioned at the Sibos conference in Sydney and a much discussed at this fall’s conference in Boston, the idea comes at a time when more in payments is automated, but much of the automation—at large international corporate sites in particular—is as fragmented as in any large bank operation. Think of it as the ability to evaluate accounts receivables, payables, and what’s on hand as intuitively as you might scan a checkbook or an Excel report. Bank standouts in the field have been conducting such ahead-of-the-market services. Wells Fargo recently enhanced its 2002 portal offering, The Commercial Electronic Office (called CEO although it isn’t necessarily aimed at chief executive officers), with the CEO Workstation, which provides a global view of cash positioning, forecasting, and trends. JPMorgan Chase, has offered Receivables Edge since 2005, which is a single sign-on browser that enables secure, consolidated payment and remittance information from any of the bank’s 15 image-based processing locations, as well as the bank’s ACH, wire transfer, and Financial EDI 42 JANUARY 2008/ABA BANKING JOURNAL Wells Fargo Commercial Electronic Office (CEO) Workstation lets corporate customers see net cash positions and other important financial indicators with graphical ease. Users can drill down into reports to get answers quickly. payment platforms. Using imaging and data capture, the solution delivers a unified view for more effective cash management. As the systems adopted by the banking industry have grown more sophisticated, so too, have the back offices of many corporate customers. The most advanced of these have tried to link enterprise resource planning and accounting systems to treasury management systems to garner better intraday, daily, weekly, and monthly reports. Help to pull it together Despite all this onsite re-engineering, many corporate customers still need help from bank and IT partners to pull information and programs together, or somehow provide information that closes the gaps created by disjunctive systems and helps corporate customers make better purchasing and payment decisions. Financial Insight’s commercial payment study shows that businesses believe that banks are the primary source for ser- vices related to a more integrated supply chain. “It’s the bank’s game to lose,” says Scarborough. And at Wells, taking a partnership role in supply chain management is paying dividends. Michelle Young, vice-president and senior product manager in the wholesale internet and Treasury Solutions group, notes that in talks with over 500 corporate customers starting in 2005, the idea of providing a real-time, accurate picture of finances as well as the ability to have faith in projections was a theme that came up again and again. “Typically, these are companies where the treasury, receivable, and other accounting departments may not be communicating or working off of common records. Or the company may have multiple bank relationships,” says Young. “We have the data and we built in the solution to support feeds from other banks. Users can also input and save transactions that aren’t, for whatever reason, included in the automatic feed. Every time they log in to the CEO portal, www.ababj.com/subscribe.html https://www.wellsfargo.com/ http://www.jpmorganchase.com http://www.ababj.com/subscribe.html
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