The challenge:

Supor has a financial shared services centre (SSC) that processes around 10,000 payments each month. However, payment processing had remained relatively manual, resulting in higher operating costs and potential operational risks. To support its international growth ambitions and expanding payments needs, the company sought to streamline processes by leveraging its SAP installation, as well as securing and automating the transmission of payment instructions to its banks.

The solution:

Recognising the time, cost and resource implications of developing an industry-standard format for bank integration in-house, Supor decided to identify and implement the best-in-class technology platform available in the market in an effort to address the challenge it faced.

After extensive evaluation of a variety of vendor and bank solutions, the company decided to leverage Citi’s ERP integrator platform to achieve a secure host-to-host connection between its existing SAP ERP system and the bank without the need to carry out major file format development and testing.

The project timescale was very constrained (with around 60% less time than comparable bank integration projects) as much of the work required for a typical integration solution (eg defining file formats and transmission mechanisms) was able to be bypassed. Costs were also very modest as the solution is one of the leanest and most flexible available in the market – leveraging Supor’s existing systems with no maintenance costs once the ERP Integrator had been implemented.

Citi’s project team provided considerable support throughout the project, including training the company’s local staff and ensuring that the technology platform complied with all the local payment practices.

The ERP integrator platform went live within six weeks of the pilot run taking place, compared with the three to six months that would normally be required for a typical integration project of this scale. All payment instructions from Supor are now processed automatically between the ERP and Citi. Citi then channels payments accordingly in compliance with all local payment rules in each country in which the company operates.

Best practice and innovation:

While many foreign multinationals have automated payments processing using host-to-host connectivity or SWIFT-based solutions, Chinese multinationals have not been able to access the same capabilities available to their competitors in other regions. As the first company in China to implement a globally-consistent, locally-compliant payments processing platform, Supor has successful leapfrogged competitors to achieve greater operational efficiency and automation. “With Citi’s ERP integrator, we have fully streamlined and automated our payment processes, resulting in immediate and ongoing cost savings,” said Xu Bo, Chief Financial Officer, Zhejiang Supor.

Furthermore, Supor’s payment processing costs have been reduced by around US$50,000 each year, and internal resources are now directed towards more value-added business initiatives. As the platform is highly scalable, Supor is now planning to extend the benefits to its other entities in China.