HP has 3,000+ bank accounts across 40 banking relationships worldwide. Due to the manual nature of its existing account maintenance processes, opening and maintaining these accounts with up-to-date signatories was an arduous and time-consuming process. The process was highly paper-intensive and expensive in terms of processing costs and human capital. The manual nature of account maintenance meant that HP had limited control and flexibility. It also resulted in poor visibility as the status of a bank request was unknown until a response was received.
“HP decided in 2006 to seek an electronic solution to these challenges,” says Ashraf Jagirdar, Treasury Consultant at HP. “Among the requirements was a messaging standard and a way to address the local legal requirements.”
In 2008, Citi proactively responded to the challenges facing HP by bringing the company’s numerous service providers together to address the need for electronic bank account management (eBAM). This is a web-based tool that electronically connects clients to Citi and helps simplify management of their account information – such as changing operating signatories. The bank proposed the creation of an electronic workflow for online collaboration and completion of documents with an authenticated, legally enforceable digital signature capability. Implementing an end-to-end electronic workflow, with data capture and forms utilising digital signatures will result in significant time savings, together with increased visibility and control. The most challenging aspect of HP’s eBAM solution was accommodating local legal requirements and promoting the idea of digital signatures within HP’s group of banks.
“Some of the local banks we work with were unfamiliar with eBAM and digital signatures,” says Jagirdar. “Indeed, many of them had not even considered that signatures were a pain point for corporates. Citi met all of our requirements with its development of the eBAM application.”
“Plenty of banks and corporates had talked about the need for eBAM but it hadn’t happened. The risk management benefits for HP – and other large corporates with multiple account providers – will be significant.”
HP also played an instrumental role in the development of the eBAM application itself, by providing end-to-end process knowledge and ideas to make the application more user-friendly and robust, in order to meet the day-to-day bank account management needs at HP. “This was important, bearing in mind the application’s potential usage in the future to meet the increasingly demanding needs of a corporate,” explains Jagirdar.
The implementation of eBAM began in 2009. “We are currently at the stage of collating bank account details and training authorised users, as well as a separate group of people, to approve profiles.”
When fully operational, eBAM will enhance and improve HP’s current paper-based account management process by dramatically reducing the need for multiple paper documents and reducing the need for wet signatures. It will also leverage digitally signed, non-repudiable documents to streamline and reduce account management turnaround times. Moreover, it will provide HP with a workspace where it can maintain records of all its Citi accounts, as well as all banking relationships, legal entities and operating signatories. Additionally, HP will gain tools to manage its functional and data entitlement. The company will also enjoy a reduction in processing times, data and transmission errors as well as costs and operating complexity, while enabling improved STP rates.
The bank demonstrated a proactive and consultative approach to meeting HP’s account management challenges. “Citi initiated a meeting with HP’s bank providers and dealt with the nitty-gritty of the eBAM application in a collaborative manner that brought results,” says Jagirdar. “Plenty of banks and corporates had talked about the need for eBAM but it hadn’t happened. The risk management benefits for HP – and other large corporates with multiple account providers – will be significant.”
