Photo of Malcolm Ow Yong, BNP Paribas, Magali Drevet and Jérôme Ruchaud, Amaris.

This solution reinforces the importance of working with a single banking partner in over 35 countries across five continents as Amaris managed to achieve here with some key benefits delivered too.

True value of a first class relationship

The challenge

The fast-paced expansion at Amaris has resulted in the company having to face a set of challenges in order to optimise its treasury operations. These include:

• Minimise bank relationships and build a well-designed liquidity management strategy to improve control and visibility.
• Improve working capital metrics and cash conversion cycle through effective management of a receivables and payables programme.
• Address the different technical platforms and lack of consistent formats across a number of countries in which the company operates.
• Improve their negotiating power with full transparency on banking fees.
• Establish an efficient communication channel with its banking partners as a protection against unanticipated problems.
• Automate invoicing and client collection for the Group, with an application directly linked to the company’s CRM and business software.

Amaris also wished to develop its own unique cash management tool connected to all of its banking partners: only one harmonised payment factory for the entire group using SFTP and SWIFT connection; payment request automatically generated through one workflow validation and reconciled by the company’s internal applications; centralisation of a unique process among a wide diversity of countries hosting specific local banking system regulations; better control of their business and external growth using one harmonised cash plan for all the Group.

Jérôme Ruchaud, Senior Admin & Finance Manager of Asia explains, “Especially in Asia, where we face many different banking systems, our internal ERP makes it possible to manage our own system in order to avoid misunderstandings with local constraints, by respecting a full internal compliance and control at the same time.”

The solution

BNP Paribas was selected as the global banking partner for the 38 countries in scope.

Phase one

• Deployment in 35 countries of payments/collections accounts managed through a single connection link from the ERP with standardised and homogenised domestic/cross border XML payment/reporting formats.
• Harmonised pricing structure applied to all countries in scope with full transparency of banking fees.
• Streamlined communication process with the banking partner with a single contact person.
• Factor collection accounts opened in nine countries connected to a cash pool for liquidity centralisation.

Phase two

• Implementation of an in-house bank and centralisation through PoBo/CoBo in Europe.

“Finding a banking partner that could deliver the same service in Europe, Asia and in the Americas was a key factor in our decision process and instrumental to our success in the implementation of a fully-fledged cash management set-up meeting our expectations,” recalls Ruchaud.

Best practice and innovation

Being able to select one solid banking partner in over 35 countries on five continents is unique and provides an undeniable added-value in terms of technical efficiency, bank communication, solution implementation and cost reduction. Amaris decided to work with their internal teams on the project in order to fulfil all the requirements of their company. Working in an international environment, covering 50 countries, and supporting a 40% sustainable growth, in Ruchaud’s view, “this was the best way of managing this project and reaping the desirable results”.

Ruchaud concludes, “For a ‘young’ group such as Amaris, being capable of setting up a well-organised and effective treasury framework demonstrates an unrivalled level of maturity and the importance of a first-class relationship with our banking partner.”