"We had a high level of manual effort when posting bank statements, both in the area of bank accounting and in the area of accounts receivable. We were therefore looking for ways to increase efficiency in these areas.
Compared to alternative solutions on the market, BPI very quickly convinced us with the prospect of being able to work with a specialized provider with fast support.
Since the first go-live of EBS Workbench in September, CLAAS has already posted a six-digit number of account statement items via EBS Workbench. The degree of automation is now well over 80%.
One of the biggest advantages of EBS Workbench for us is that customizing the tool (adapting the posting rules) can be done comparatively easily by key users in the finance department. Here, the finance department itself is the driver of automation.
We also value the following points in particular when working with EBS Workbench today:
Joerg Opperbeck, A/R Accounting & Credit Management, CLAAS KGaA mbH, Germany
*This customer quote was translated into english based on the original german version"The decision to implement a new payment solution allowed us to also rethink the processing of electronic bank account statements.
We got to know BPI through a recommendation from our payment service partner.
I would like to highlight two aspects from the project with BPI:
All in all, a great project that was also a pleasure to deal with on a mutual basis and led to a high automation rate from Go Live onwards."
Michael Debus, CashManagement & Finance, DATEV eG
"With the implementation of SAP S/4 HANA, we started looking for an add-on for posting account statements so that we would not have to rely on extensive customizing in the SAP standard. Our decision quickly fell on EBS Workbench, as BPI already convinced us in the first presentation on the interface of the tool as well as in the communication on cooperation.
EBS Workbench delivered exactly what we were looking for:
In addition, we also benefit from the extensive SAP expertise "beyond" the bank statement and were able to improve several issues in our processes with the advice and helpful tips.
We from the Finance & Accounting department of Dehner Garten-Center can absolutely recommend the tool EBS Workbench, the consulting by BPI as well as the cooperation with BPI.”
Key user from Finance, Treasury & Accounting, Dehner Garden Center in Rain*
*)Due to company policy of the customer, name of the contact person cannot be published on this page, but we will be happy to arrange a bilateral contact with the responsible contact person of the customer.
"Improving our existing automatic bank statement processing in SAP was an important project for our finance department last year. Our expectations for the solution were:
We have been working with EBS Workbench for a year now. The support by BPI works excellently.
Despite the special situation that no on-site appointments were possible due to Corona restrictions, the planned go-live date could be kept. Even after that, the support provided by the BPI employees was characterized by fast response times and on-time delivery.
The Add-on allows changes and adjustments to be made by the finance department and implemented independently of IT.
Our expectations were fully met.
The rate of no-touch automatic bookings has increased by from 65.94% to 80.95%.
For bookings that cannot be fully automated, EBS offers numerous options to support the users in the day-to-day work (e.g. use of payment advice data or automatic creation of proposals for more extensive bookings).”
Key user from the finance department, medium-sized company in the food industry*
*)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.
"I am a big fan of automatizations and embrace them in all areas of a business – in this case in our SAP S/4HANA Finance project.
The EBS Workbench add-on is a highly valuable tool has a visible positive magnitude on our business. I will go ahead in list the benefits we are already seeing:
Denisa Simion, Consolidation and Compliance, Finance / Accounting & Reporting, Huf Hülsbeck & Fürst
"VION N.V. was looking for a tool to achieve a higher degree of automation for bank statement processing and cash application in SAP.
The shared service center in NL manages payment transactions for 40 entities in SAP covering a total of about 70 bank accounts at various national and international banks.
Due to industry / business requirements, our accounting processes are quite complex and different amongst our entities. As an example our reference numbers are originating from various external IT Systems and we have to manage collections on behalf of our subsidiaries which requires cross company code clearings in SAP – just to name a few.
Before engaging with EBS Workbench, we were not satisfied with our automatic matching rate and we were quite dependent on IT resources. Our expectation was to increase automation substantially and becoming independent from IT.
We started implementing EBS at 19 entities. As a first result our existing automation rate was instantly doubled.
The rollout to the remaining entities has been performed by the responsible power-user in the Shared Service Center.
During the implementation of EBS and the related training to our people, we immediately experienced the benefits of EBS:
We look back on a pleasant and professional collaboration with BPI."
Monique van Straten – Zijlstra, Supervisor Cash Management Team Shared Service Center, Vion Food Nederland BV, The Netherlands
"While building up a shared service center in the Netherlands, KAO' s Finance members are on the constant lookout for improvement and the leanest processes possible. For our Cash allocation, we have definitely made the right choice with EBS Workbench from BPI and it is a great success.
EBS Workbench helped us tremendously to automate the cash allocation of our 18 different entities, for which we also have several banks and currencies.
It is not only the tool, for which we got training, guidance & support, but it is also the people from BPI who were amazing.
We had 2 key BPI people that constantly advised us on Finance as well as IT decisions and shared global best practices. We all always find exceptions, and even there BPI was able to provide solutions.
We saved time from tiring manual daily inputs, that we now use on other projects."
Jean-Pascal Kountar - Team Lead EMEA Cash&Banking FSSC/ EMEA - Kao Business Services B.V., The Netherlands
"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
“The Management and the Users of Hellenic Petroleum are very pleased with the results that EBS Workbench delivers for us.
Hellenic Petroleum started the implementation of EBS Workbench for the specific reason of automating internal controls and increasing compliance with the focus on the bank statement process.
The implementation was very well organized and BPI as well as the Greece consulting partner Aspire were supporting the internal project team of Hellenic Petroleum not only to set-up EBS Workbench, but also to fine-tune already well established internal finance processes which impact bank statement accounting. This way we instantly achieved an automation rate of more than 97% for processing and auditing the electronic bank statement in SAP. As a result all compliance relevant processes are well documented in the system and the business users finish their work in a fraction of the time now.
Our plan is to quickly roll out the solution to other group companies. We consider the project as a great success and can recommend EBS Workbench as well as BPI and Aspire for consulting.”
Stefanos Papadimitriou, Director of Accounting and Finance at HELLENIC PETROLEUM
Vamvouka Stavrianthi, Accounting Manager at HELLENIC PETROLEUM Group of Companies