The challenge
As a global company, Nokia’s treasury team is responsible for efficiently managing cash flows around the world. However, the process to gain visibility into cash positions was no longer sufficiently dynamic to allow more immediate assessment and decision-making.
The team recognised the need to see balances in real time. Treasury set an ambitious objective to have visibility into cash positions within the company’s own system to increase the ability to better manage Nokia’s investments and positions.
As a leading technology company, Nokia has an unparalleled reputation for developing cutting-edge solutions. This focus on technology excellence carries over into the treasury function. Nokia has for a long time been leading the development within treasury technology.
Nokia has highly automated treasury processes and manages these processes via its in-house treasury management system (TMS). It now sought to take another step towards realising a real-time treasury.
The solution
The team saw an opportunity to leverage APIs to connect the in-house treasury management system with the company’s banking partners to obtain real-time balances on all accounts globally.
Nokia sought out its banking partner J.P. Morgan, to implement APIs, creating a seamless integration between the bank and the company’s treasury management system, enabling real-time access to balances. By further digitising and automating the treasury function, this best in class solution improves the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of internal systems – a vitally important mission for the business.
Best practice and innovation
Innovation is in the DNA of everything Nokia does. In fact, this commitment to innovation is so strong that treasury has its own dedicated IT resources, allowing it to push the envelope when it comes to innovation because these technology experts already have a deep understanding of the treasury function.
Because the Nokia treasury team has been so keenly focused on digital transformation, when it came time to implement balance report APIs, the actual launch of the programme was accomplished in just two weeks.
Amongst the innovative approaches Nokia has taken, treasury has structured its technology systems to receive data and then disseminate it into various other systems where it is used to create robust reporting. This enables Nokia to pull data from different sources, easily control where the data goes and, as a result, gain meaningful insights to drive decisions. The flexibility and agility of this system enables Nokia to take full advantage of APIs, gaining real-time insight into the balances of 100% of the company’s bank accounts. As a result, treasury has now automated the management of data and users on the J.P. Morgan online banking platform using APIs.
This innovative use of APIs has made the treasury function more efficient and more secure, which in turn allows the treasury team to better support the business.
Key benefits
Nokia’s implementation of APIs has delivered real-time visibility into balances for all of the company’s bank accounts globally, providing invaluable, instant insights that allow treasury to run analytics that can support vital efforts to manage investments, receivables, intraday positions and other treasury operations.
This use of technology has delivered critical benefits, such as greater treasury transparency, automation and cost efficiency. By digitising treasury processes, the team has eliminated reliance on old batch processes that delivered outdated data. As a result, treasury has automated real-time access to balance information, enabling better and more accurate decision making.
For Nokia’s treasury team, API-enabled balance reporting is just one step along the company’s digital journey. Treasury sees implementation of APIs as part of the greater foundation that will allow the organisation to grow even more efficiency and remain at the forefront of the industry well into the future.
