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Hitachi Consulting moves a Regional Financial Services Company to Oracle Cloud Applications, delivering significant productivity improvements

Regional Financial Services Company

SOLUTION

MultiCloud Acceleration Solution

SERVICE

Oracle Enterprise Modernization

INDUSTRY

Challenge

Challenge:

  • Replace and improve outdated procurement system and processes
  • Automate bank reconciliation
  • Establish stricter payment controls

Solution

Solution:

  • Used Hitachi Migration Tool to help scope effort
  • Migrated client to Oracle Cloud Applications for financials and procurement
  • Automated and improved multiple business processes

Outcomes

  • Automated almost all bank reconciliations
  • Reduced reporting production time from three to four days to one day
  • Improved invoice processing with OCR and automation

Background

  • Regional Financial Services Company
  • Manages $6.5B in assets
  • Serves more than 1 million individuals and businesses

This leading Regional Financial Services Company manages more than $6.5 billion in assets for 1 million+ individual and business customers across Europe. Services offered encompass retail, general business, fleet and motor, asset management, personal loans and leasing. This company focuses on providing exceptional customer experiences by offering innovative financial solutions with high service levels.

With the cloud adoption, the client automated almost all of their bank reconciliations. This provided an enormous benefit to their business.

– Ian Jacob, Sr. Director and Oracle Delivery Lead, Hitachi Consulting

Business Challenge

Outdated systems and processes were affecting the company’s ability to be as responsive as needed in this highly competitive industry. They decided to upgrade from the current Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) to Oracle Cloud Applications, and targeted additional areas for improvement by:

  • Replacing current procurement solution and processes.
  • Establishing stricter controls over when and how payments were sent out.
  • Automating bank reconciliation, replacing the existing five-stage process that included many manual components.
  • Adding optical character recognition (OCR) for invoice scanning.
  • Improving integration with third-party applications, to reduce reliance on manual interventions.
  • Simplifying the complex middleware connectivity requirements.

Solution

Hitachi Consulting used its Hitachi Migration Tool to automate data extraction from the existing EBS applications and more accurately assess the work effort required for this project. This provided information that helped fine-tune the proposal so the team could properly price the project and submit a competitive bid.

The Hitachi Migration Tool and the insights it generated provided a differentiating factor. Other reasons Hitachi Consulting was selected for the work included its templated approach and use of FastSTART, a toolkit designed to accelerate the move to a cloud platform. FastSTART reduces many of the risks associated with complex ERP implementations using components such as sample chart of account designs, templates, scripts, how-to guides and pre-built project plans.

“The Hitachi team was pragmatic and highly knowledgeable, providing me full trust in their ability to deliver the solutions they committed to,” said the Regional Financial Services Company’s Chief Accountant.

The cloud migration, along with several process improvements, was completed within the requested fourteen week timeframe. Hitachi implemented Oracle Cloud Applications for financial and procurement systems, customizing processes to support specific business functions. The new approach automated and established a role-based approval process, improving procurement procedures. An OCR solution added document scan capabilities for invoices and other materials, helping to automate several financial functions. The team also redesigned the chart of accounts, introducing improved hierarchies.

After redesigning the chart of accounts, Hitachi automated the month-end processing routines, reducing the time required for this task’s reporting production from three to four days to one day. Additional process improvements now support payments as well as the reconciliation process.

Integration with third-party applications was improved by using Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) as middleware for file transformations, web service calls, notifications and automation. The Regional Financial Services Company now has full integration with its external human capital management system and Concur Payment system.

Value Delivered

Automating bank processes
With automation, the Regional Financial Services Company achieved significant efficiency improvements. “With the cloud adoption, the client automated almost all of their bank reconciliations,” said Ian Jacob, Senior Director and Oracle Delivery Lead, Hitachi Consulting. “This provided an enormous benefit to their business.”

Month-end reconciliation
The monthly financial reconciliation had been an extensive, multi-day manual process, involving complex Excel spreadsheets with more than 20 worksheets to provide different views of the data. With the month-end report generation significantly streamlined and automated, the task is now measured in hours, not days.

Invoice scanning
Document scanning and OCR helped automate invoice processing, which was then tied into a new approvals process. Invoices are matched to a purchase order before payments are issued, adding controls to their payment procedures.

Conclusion

Consolidated, streamlined and improved processes have enhanced the Regional Financial Services Company’s ability to increase new business. They have access to better financial information, with enhanced abilities to generate different types of financial reports.

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