Absa Corporate and Investment Banking (CIB) has collaborated with two major Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) providers in the manufacturing and legal sectors Epic ERP and AJS respectively. This collaboration is to implement integrated seamless payment solutions which will reduce inefficiencies and minimise fraud and operational risks which are common with online banking payment systems.
John Molanda, Head Product Innovation, says many business clients perform their financial transactions using an online banking system, which creates inefficiencies due to recapturing data and increases the risk of payments files being intercepted. While the alternative is to create a host-to-host connection to transfer data between their line of business systems and the bank, this invariably results in high costs and is technically challenging.
The bank has been working with the two collaborators to launch seamless banking solutions like integrated payments and reconciliations. Furthermore, with the advent of Covid-19, this latest innovation is yet another example of how Absa is responding to adopting digitised interventions to limit manual processes, and enhance the client experience.
AJS is a leading provider of trusted business software applications for the legal and corporate markets. Justin Perfect, Support and Project Manager of AJS, says he is delighted to be associated with a financial partner like Absa, and looks forward to unlocking even more synergies that will naturally benefit both AJS and Absa clientele.
“Not only have we as a software development house embraced the integration with Absa, but more importantly our clients have too. They have experienced first-hand the motto of “more for less” bearing fruit, as a task that took more than twenty minutes, now takes five minutes to complete. Added to this is the reduction in risk to the firm that has put them at ease. As we continue our journey with Absa, we are excited by the value that we will be able to offer our clients,” says Perfect.
EPIC ERP is the master reseller for EPICOR software in Africa. Epicor primarily focuses on manufacturing clients in the mid-market segment.
Stuart Scanlon, Managing Director of Epic ERP, says the company is proud to be associated with a bank like Absa, whose ambition is to become the leading Pan-African corporate and investment business, through placing focus on collaborations at the core of creating innovative solutions and gaining access to new markets.
“We look forward to working with Absa as this relationship represents a powerful opportunity for Epicor and Epic ERP customers to not only improve banking processes but help in reducing fraud,” says Scanlon.
“Leading up to this collaboration, the Absa Transactional Banking teams conducted extensive client research, which substantially enriched our understanding of client operating environments. Through this research, we discovered that while bank platforms are pivotal in helping run a client’s business they can also be points of inefficiency and risk. With this understanding, we deliberately looked for organisations with whom we could collaborate to offer our clients an even more secure and efficient way of doing business,” he says.
“We have used bank API’s to connect to the ERP’s in this way we can ensure that we personalize the client experience and that the relevant bank response is real time. We are excited with the collaboration and this gets us closer to making sure that our clients can get business done,” says Molanda.
Absa’s transactional banking strategy is to build digitally scalable solutions for corporate clients. “This initiative forms a critical part of our digitisation journey. We are investing in critical API infrastructure to be able to offer our clients seamless banking experience. Working with a technology like Epic ERP and AJS, has been great for us to be able to push the boundaries of our technical capabilities. We are excited with the collaboration and this gets us closer to bringing our clients possibilities to life,” says Molanda.
