The Finnish deadline for full implementation of the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) is 2010 and in any case, Vaisala wanted to be among the first to reap the benefits of SEPA. Rather than managing the SEPA transition in-house, Vaisala was looking to adopt a solution to facilitate this.
As Treasury Manager Anna-Maija Laakkonen explains, “The main reason for this was our current ERP project. When our new ERP system is in place, payments data will come directly from the new system. In the old system, however, the domestic suppliers’ bank account information was in the BBAN format and we did not want to touch that.
“We wanted to utilise SEPA benefits before the conclusion of the ERP project, and we also wanted to find out what exactly will change in practice in the SEPA era. The Finnish banks and financial institutions have agreed to implement new bank connections and security procedures in the country, which also played a big part in our decision.”
The company was already using OpusCapita’s electronic banking solution, so the decision was taken to implement a service offered by OpusCapita, SEPA Transition Assurance.
For a monthly fee, OpusCapita makes the necessary changes to the company’s file formats, enabling Vaisala to postpone the in-house transition to SEPA while enjoying the benefits early. “Since we already use the OpusCapita electronic banking solution, it was a natural choice,” says Laakkonen.
“The whole transition was packaged into a single comprehensive service which made things easy, since it comprises all things important in SEPA. We were able to start making SEPA payments straight away without any changes to the payments data.”
Vaisala was at the forefront in adopting this solution and was the first of OpusCapita’s customers to send payments via the bank’s new web services channel. The solution converts payments from the national data standards to the C2B XML format required by SEPA, and the Finnish account numbers are converted into IBAN and BIC format.
“The whole transition was packaged into a single comprehensive service which made things easy, since it comprises all things important in SEPA.”
As part of the solution, Vaisala also made use of OpusCapita’s SEPA consulting package. At the outset of the project, OpusCapita gathered information on Vaisala’s payment transactions, systems, infrastructure and IT equipment. Workshops were then held on the background and meaning of SEPA, expected changes relating to payments traffic and the status of Finnish banks.
The payments data was tested to ensure fast implementation without interruptions in the services and Vaisala was given a timetabled transition plan document to assist with the internal transition to SEPA, as well as a list of things to consider before the transition.
Laakkonen says: “OpusCapita keep us informed, train and consult us and keep themselves aware of all the developments in the regulation. Customers do not have to understand the many implications the regulation has on the technological side. By simply paying a monthly fee we can sleep well – they worry for us.”
