The Interpublic Group of Companies, Inc. (IPG)
The OpenText solution provides IPG with holistic access and transparency into our bank connectivity process.
Low visibility
Keeping a pulse on market drivers is IPG’s business: the company provides advertising, marketing and media services for many of the world’s global brands, and employs nearly 50,000 people across multiple disciplines in all major world markets.
With operations across more than 100 countries, IPG is headquartered in New York City. To stay fluid in a shifting economy, IPG needed a true, real-time worldwide cash balance snapshot of its accounts that reside with many different financial institutions. IPG was using SWIFT financial messaging services, but needed greater visibility into payments and statements, as well as SWIFT messages coming through the system.
According to Lisa Tana, director of global treasury operations for IPG, “We were looking for maximum transparency of incoming and outgoing payment and statement files and needed a partner that offers full visibility into individual SWIFT message files to see that they’re actually coming in a timely manner.”
Service from a global, experienced provider
In Q4 2013, IPG decided to transition from a legacy treasury workstation to Wall Street Systems. This workstation included cash management, FX, debt/investment, and accounting. It was also decided that file transmission monitoring was to be brought in-house. As such, IPG simultaneously implemented OpenText™ B2B Managed Services with SWIFT Service Bureau to obtain end-to-end visibility of the file transmission process.
Operating on a global scale, the service bureau from OpenText offers a single, standardized way to communicate with all banking partners, matching preferred formats. OpenText SWIFT Service Bureau interfaces with IPG’s workstation to collect and route payment or statement information through SWIFT and host-to-host, then return intra- and end-of-day balances.
OpenText offers a comprehensive solution as it handles both SWIFT and host-to-host connections. One of IPG’s main banking providers uses OpenText, so familiarity and reliability also played a role in product selection.
To implement SWIFT Service Bureau, IPG worked directly with a “very dedicated and knowledgeable” OpenText project manager. With more than 150 bank branches to engage with, IPG prioritized the banks for a phased approach. “We tackled the US bank providers in the first phase along with our major in-country pooling banks. We laid out our goals and created a phased approach because we had so many banks to go after and we didn’t know exactly where our starting point would be,” said Tana. Within about eight months, the first phase was complete.
Timely insight for responsive business
Leading IPG’s Global Treasury Operations group, Tana recognizes several benefits of using OpenText B2B Managed Services with SWIFT Service Bureau. Following implementation, IPG executives will enjoy accurate, timely insight into total international cash balances for making informed corporate decisions.
“The OpenText solution provides IPG with holistic access and transparency into our bank connectivity process. OpenText provides us with robust reporting notifications on any transaction that goes out the door. The OpenText and Wall Street solutions give us immediate visibility if there’s something wrong or if we need to look at the raw data of a file,” said Tana. The more efficient system for IPG limits the number of reports that need to be run, resulting in cost savings for the company.
