APAR Industries Ltd. is an Indian company founded in 1958. With a legacy spanning over six decades, APAR have evolved from a modest power conductor manufacturer into a global powerhouse in the electrical and energy infrastructure space by specialising the manufacture and sale of conductors, cables, specialty oils and lubricants, earning worldwide acclaim for its pioneering spirit and commitment to quality. The company has skillfully steered through the dynamic currents of technological innovation and market expansion, charting a course that now reaches over 140 countries. This enduring voyage reflects APAR Industries foundational ethos: to illuminate the world by powering industries and communities with solutions that are superior in performance, sustainable and socially responsible.
The challenge
Treasury operations were heavily dependent on MS Office tools like Word and Excel. These tools, while useful for basic tasks, were not suited for managing complex financial workflows, leading to inefficiencies and increased operational burden.
Exchanges of documents and requests were conducted primarily via email, which created fragmented communication, lacked traceability and made process monitoring difficult. Team members frequently had to re-enter and consolidate data across multiple Excel sheets, resulting in an estimated 30-40% duplication of effort. This not only consumed valuable time but also increased the risk of human error.
Generating Management Information System (MIS) reports involved extensive manual consolidation and formatting, making the process labour-intensive and inefficient. Due to the manual nature of data handling and multiple touchpoints, the accuracy and reliability of data were often compromised, making it difficult to trust the outputs for strategic decision-making.
The absence of real-time insights hindered the ability to make proactive, data-driven decisions. Decision-making became reactive and slow, especially when handling abnormal or anomalous data. Manual workflows made it challenging to quickly analyse and respond to market shifts or operational anomalies, requiring extraordinary effort and coordination across teams.
The dependency on manual processes increased the likelihood of errors, which not only affected accuracy but also reduced overall efficiency and confidence in the treasury function. Considering the rapidly changing markets, quick data dependent financial decision making is crucial for any entity and treasury being the important enabling function for any business ensuring availability of funds at optimum cost and with diversified product mix, risk management through hedging instruments, automation is most important requirement in all treasury related operations.
The solution
To overcome these challenges, and to effectively manage and streamline its operations, APAR Industries decided to implement IBSFINtech’s Treasury Management System. The company required a solution to manage its complete treasury function. To address its treasury automation requirements, the company procured this Innovative Treasury Management solution encompassing currency (FX) risk management, trade finance, investment, debt and cash flow and liquidity management modules.
The comprehensive, integrated and innovative solution enables the company to enhance visibility, improve control, mitigate operational risk, drive automation, optimise business efficiency and ensure business continuity. IBSFINtech’s solution is an “all in one” system, adept at accommodating the complexities of multi-asset class, multi-currency, multi-location and multi-company operations. The platform empowers the company to manage compliance, financial and operational risks in one solution.
Best practice and innovation
For a group as vast and operationally complex as APAR, aggregating financial data and deriving consolidated insights was a significant operational challenge. The successful integration of IBSFINtech’s Treasury Management System with APAR’s ERP and third-party platforms transformed this complexity into a streamlined, automated ecosystem. Automating treasury operations at such scale was a milestone. The solution used by the treasury team includes currency (FX) risk management – the currency module is a holistic module for exposure and risk management.
The solution integrates seamlessly with the company’s existing IT infrastructure, including an interface developed for SAP, an ERP used by APAR.
APAR has also streamed live with the Bloomberg terminal for taking all hedges through the live FX Terminal. Earlier the process was followed manually by tele calling the treasury desk of banks and negotiating rates through tele conversations on a one-on-one basis. This Bloomberg live terminal has made each deal competitive and brings transparency among participating banks for quoting rates on a real time basis. The Terminal filters the competitive rates in increasing order and APAR executes the deal. This has eased risk management in getting market driven rates for each transaction.
Key benefits
Cost savings.
Process efficiencies.
Increased automation.
Risk mitigated.
Improved visibility.
Errors reduced.
Manual intervention reduced.
Increased system connectivity.
Future-proof solution.
“Partnering with IBSFINtech has been a transformative experience for our treasury operations. Their advanced digital treasury platform has revolutionised the way we work, enabling real-time transaction execution, seamless data recording, and the elimination of redundant processes. This has not only enhanced our operational efficiency but also empowered us with accurate, real-time insights for informed decision-making.”
Sanjay Rohit, Senior General Manager – Finance (Treasury Head)
The Adam Smith Awards Asia are the industry benchmark for best practice and innovation in corporate treasury. To find out more please visit treasurytoday.com/adam-smith-awards-asia
