Etex uses Fides to centralize operations and automate processes, increasing business efficiency
Etex is a Belgian industrial group that manufactures and sells a wide range of building materials, marketed worldwide under renowned brands. With over 14,500 employees working on 119 production sites in 45 countries and with an annual turnover of around 3 billion euros, Etex is an international player in sustainable building solutions.
Belgian industrial company Etex needed to centralize operations and automate processes to improve efficiency, while seamlessly connecting multiple subsidiaries to 16 banks across 23 countries.
Belgian industrial company Etex needed to centralize operations and automate processes to improve efficiency, while seamlessly connecting multiple subsidiaries to 16 banks across 23 countries.
Etex is a Belgian industrial group that manufactures and sells a wide range of building materials, marketed worldwide under renowned brands. With over 14,500 employees working on 119 production sites in 45 countries and with an annual turnover of around 3 billion euros, Etex is an international player in sustainable building solutions.
Etex’s treasury is tasked with managing a high volume of transactions and reporting across 16 banks in 23 countries. Managing day-to-day operations was taking a significant amount of staff time. Etex determined that centralization of operations and process automation would deliver greater efficiency for its small treasury team, freeing up their time to work on more business-critical projects.
For bank connectivity, Etex treasury staff were primarily reliant upon the various portals provided by each individual bank. They also worked with a local company that provided a small level of connectivity across several, but not all, of the other banks.
Shortly before deciding to look for a centralized bank connectivity solution, Etex had switched TMS providers, moving to the City Financials TMS by ION Group. The company wanted to have the ability to retrieve bank statements and make payments directly through their TMS. ION Group is a Fides partner, and let the Etex team know about Fides’ proven multi-banking solutions. The decision to go with Fides was an easy one.
Initially, Etex opted to just connect Fides with City Financials, setting up the ability for straight-through processing of SWIFT statements and payments, using its own corporateBIC. Everything is automated, providing ameasurable time-savings and reduction in administrative work.
Etex has multiple accounting service centers, which are regionally centralized. A couple of years ago, treasury analyst Charline Renard was approached by the service center which manages central operations for Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, and a few other countries. Having seen the success realized by treasury, the service center wanted to implement SWIFT connectivity for all its accounts as well.
Connecting 17 countries with 10 different banks in Europe plus an SAP ERP was a huge scope of work, taking two years of implementation time. Approximately 150 bank accounts were involved, and connectivity was needed for both statements and payments. This again proved to be successful.
The SWIFT projects provided Etex with the opportunity to review and improve the payment file release process. With systems integrated and payment files encrypted, the process went from being semi-manual to fully automated.
Fides is able to convert any type of statement format, ensuring consistency. On the treasury side, the statements are always structured the same way, and the transfers are almost always zero balance movements. That makes it easy to automate transfers based on certain rules and triggers.
The service center, on the other hand, is not working with structured numbers so there is still some manual work involved. However, with Fides in place, they were able to automate at least half of the statements and data to realize a significant time savings.
One area of Fides services that Etex finds particularly helpful are its powerful sanction filters.Using Fides’ sanction filtering capabilities helps organizations manage and mitigate payment fraud, thereby reducing financial and reputational risk.
Fides pre-screens all transactions at the banking level, prior to market release, preventing any such transactions from being processed.
Etex plans to continue its relationship with Fides not only due to its excellent results but also because of the high level of customer service and support that Fides provides. Now, Etex is working with Fides to implement system connectivity to the Latin Americas region, as well as Asia and South Africa. The company is also considering Fides EFTweb as a backup portal solution in the event of any TMS system outages or downtime.
Fides is the world leader in multibank connectivity, payments and transaction communications. A market leader for more than a century, Fides is committed to making financial operations as efficient, transparent and secure as possible for all organizations. More than 4,000 clients rely on Fides for efficient cash and liquidity management, through connectivity to more than 13,000 banks and comprehensive workflow, reporting, conversion, validation and security services. Whether you access via the secure Fides ONEHub or leverage our seamless integration with third-party ERP, TMS and other backend systems, Fides is the only platform you need.
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