The AFP 2011 conference held in Boston last week was well attended and included a very complete agenda for Treasury professionals, especially those looking to expand their knowledge about doing business internationally. In today’s business environment between the conference agenda and the exhibitors on the show floor, this was an important conference to attend if you want to stay informed about advances in treasury.
During the conference, we had an opportunity to visit with a number of financial institutions, corporate practitioners and solution providers. Our focus at AFP was on Remote Deposit Capture (RDC), and how the implementation of an RDC system can support an organizations goal to improve productivity and liquidity for corporate customers. There was, however, not a lot on the agenda about RDC giving us more time to spend on the show floor.
The AFP 2011 conference held in Boston last week was well attended and included a very complete agenda for Treasury professionals, especially those looking to expand their knowledge about doing business internationally. In today’s business environment between the conference agenda and the exhibitors on the show floor, this was an important conference to attend if you want to stay informed about advances in treasury.
During the conference, we had an opportunity to visit with a number of financial institutions, corporate practitioners and solution providers. Our focus at AFP was on Remote Deposit Capture (RDC), and how the implementation of an RDC system can support an organizations goal to improve productivity and liquidity for corporate customers. There was, however, not a lot on the agenda about RDC giving us more time to spend on the show floor.
The AFP exhibit hall included a number of vendors discussing and demonstrating Remote Deposit Capture (RDC) and mobile Remote Deposit Capture (mRDC). The solution providers included check scanner manufacturers (Burroughs, Canon, CTS, Digital Check, Epson, Panini and RDM) and solution providers (3i Infotech, BankServ {Fundtech}, Cachet, FIS, Fiserv, RDM and Wausau). In addition to seeing the latest in check scanning technology, we were also able to see the latest in scanner management technology from Panini; the latest in remote cash management from Burroughs and Brinks; advances in mRDC from Cachet, FIS, Fiserv, RDM, Wausau and 3i Infotech; and the latest in integration of RDC into a Payments Service Hub architecture from Wausau and 3i Infotech.
The corporate treasury practitioners at the conference were all looking for ways to improve the productivity and liquidity position of their organizations. The financial institution representatives we met with shared these goals, and offered solutions on how to reach them (naturally) with their services. In our conversations with executives from several of these financial institutions, we had an opportunity to hear from them their view of the compelling issues of the day and without a doubt, they all reflected the themes of the conference: productivity; liquidity and internationalization.
In the area of receivables and payments the discussions focused on the integration of the payments streams into the core systems of a corporations AR and ERP systems. The integration of payments as an integrated component offers corporations the ability to decrease DSO (definition?), improve availability of cash and improved productivity through a unified workflow. None of this was lost on financial institutions as they look for ways to expand their service offerings and the ones I did talk too are doing some very innovative things with RDC.
US Bank is using RDC as a key component of their strategy to expand their integration services to their corporate customers through enhanced reporting and integration. US Bank’s integration customer base includes an impressive number of major financial services companies where US Bank’s payments services are integrated into their internal AR and ERP systems. This, the integration of RDC into the internal financial applications of a corporate customer, is an example of Advanced Corporate Capture and US Bank is the first bank that we have spoken with to have lead with this as a prime marketing approach. US Bank has found that, in partnership with their technology vendor RDM, they can address their customers’ needs for integration and customized workflows in support of those twin objectives of improved productivity and liquidity. The results of these added-value services has led to US Bank’s customers increased use of other treasury services and, I would assume, increased revenues.
US Bank was not the only bank talking about integration. Fifth Third is also leveraging its technology for RDC, by first focusing on understanding the business objectives of their customers and then using this consultative approach to determine the best services they can offer. Fifth Third’s RDC and remote cash offerings (Smart Safe) offer the flexibility to meet the needs of both corporate and retail merchant clients.
We also had a few minutes with Wells Fargo where the integration of the legacy Wachovia customers into Wells Fargo seems to be going very well. Customers are migrating to the CEO Portal and, from what we heard at AFP, they are impressed with its’ capabilities and the continuous enhancements being made. The most recent functionality that Wells has added to the CEO Portal is s mRDC with the brand name CEO Mobile Deposit.
More to come…
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