Challenge

Crown Agents Bank, headquartered in London, England is a UK-regulated provider of wholesale foreign exchange and cross-border payment services. In 2016, Crown Agents Bank was acquired by the private equity firm Helios and this acquisition marked the start of a digital transformation strategy with the objective of transitioning the Bank into a FinTech organization. Crown Agents Bank recognized that they needed a solution to streamline and automate their Accounts Payable and Procurement processes.  The onset of the global pandemic in early 2020 and the subsequent move to remote working further accelerated this strategy.

Solution

SoftCo provides Crown Agents Bank with an end-to-end Procure-to-Pay solution, encompassing all elements from Vendor Management and Procurement, through to invoice capture, matching, query management, and invoice approval. SoftCo P2P is fully integrated with the bank’s existing ERP system, Infor SUNSystems. The solution enables Crown Agents Bank to capture invoices electronically on receipt, reduces the time required to process invoices and improves the accuracy of invoice registration and validation.

Implementation

SoftCo implemented the Crown Agents Bank P2P solution using its proven Project Delivery Methodology (PDM) which has been refined over 30 years of experience, using best practice, and built on the international project management standards PRINCE2 and ITIL. According to Crown Agents Bank “The information gathering stage was straightforward, easy to understand and centered around the completion of templates capturing core data alongside project meetings. The system was sufficiently flexible to be able to adopt all the key customizations required by our business.”

Results

SoftCo Procure-to-Pay provides Crown Agents Bank with full control over its entire procurement process delivering significantly improved controls within the AP process. Crown Agents Bank has dramatically reduced the time and costs associated with manual invoice processing across tasks such as recording invoice details, authorization, approval, journal posting and VAT returns. The auto-match of each invoice saves hundreds of hours of employee time and facilitates straight-through processing of invoices. By digitizing the accounts payable process, the bank can capture expenditure, identify opportunities for business growth, decrease processing times and reduce human error. In addition, the cloud-based solution has enabled their teams to continue their work with improved visibility and efficiency.