We warmly congratulate Siemens Healthineers

to the winning project

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We want to make great achievements visible to a wide audience.

Wanted: Outstanding achievements in treasury

For the second time, the Finance Symposium is honouring innovative digital transformation projects with the "Digital Treasury Excellence" award. The aim is to highlight projects in the field of digital transformation. The award recognises treasury departments and teams that excel in the digitalisation of treasury processes. The competition is aimed at all companies (non-banks) that would like to present their innovative strength to the treasury community in order to exchange ideas and encourage imitation.

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The winner of the DTE 2022

The digital hub - a central, bank-independent trade finance platform

Challenge

  • Due to the company's IPO and the establishment of an independent Treasury & Finance organisation, it was decided to develop a new, stand-alone trade finance settlement platform.
  • The goal was to develop a centrally controlled, global, bank-independent TF solution that increases productivity through digitalisation, enables automated bank communication and optimises adjacent areas.

Project result

  • The tool developed makes it possible to automatically record entries in the application, reduce manual work and control steps through consistency and logic checks set up, improve quality, and control how many treasury employees need to check a transaction.
  • The tool's multi-bank capability enables the connection of a large number of banks via different communication channels and thus improves process efficiency. In addition, the tool enables the upload of relevant documents so that they are stored centrally. Reports can be provided and sent in real time or on a reporting date basis.
  • About 12,000 guarantees and letters of credit as well as 5,000 applications p. a. are mapped.

Highlights

  • Introduction of a worldwide, bank-independent platform in 65 countries with over 1,000 users. Use, automatic sending and processing of "SWIFT for Corporates" message types with 25 banks.
  • Significant cost and time savings have been realised through digitalisation.

The project team

Treasury IT Team

Sven Eckert

Head of Treasury IT

Siemens Healthineers

Lisa Koebrich

Project Lead Treasury IT

Siemens Healthineers

Treasury Trade Finance Team

Tim Bachinger

Project Lead Trade Finance

Siemens Healthineers

Milan Kalajdzic

Head of Trade Finance & Sponsor

Siemens Healthineers

Martin Jungbauer

Project Lead Trade Finance SWIFT for corporates

Siemens Healthineers

The donation of EUR 5,000 goes to the Siemens Caring Hands association.

Siemens Caring Hands e.V. is an independent non-profit association that was founded in 2001 on the initiative of Siemens AG.

The association is particularly active in providing support in special disaster situations and directly pursues charitable and non-profit purposes. This includes, among other things, the promotion of aid for disaster victims, the support of fire, disaster and civil protection as well as the promotion of public health.

The other finalists

All projects at a glance

TFAI - Trade Finance Artificial Intelligence
Th!nk Digital
"From seed to harvest": New ways in digital liquidity protection

Challenge

  • The aim was to develop and implement an AI-based analysis tool for identifying and mitigating risks from warranty texts.
  • Based on a collection of essential warranty clauses from experts, a "sample base" was developed for a machine learning tool that was able to correctly recognise approx. 80% of the clauses.

Project result

  • A "Digital Assistant" was developed for the business area, which automatically checks the guarantee clauses in advance, explains the clauses and makes formulation recommendations
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  • An audit tool was developed for the trade finance sector, which retrospectively analyses the processed guarantees and identifies deep-dive samples.
  • An algorithm has been developed which can create value for the business and trade finance sector based on the guarantee texts.

Highlights

  • At the time of the project launch, there was no solution on the external market for checking warranty texts.
  • The main work was to teach TFAI the critical clauses.
  • The system is used about 1,000 times a month by 8,000 users worldwide.

Project Manager:
Brenner Alexander
Head of Global Coordination and Development CF F Trade Finance Advisory

Project staff:
Leifeld Florian
Head of Data Analytics CF F Operations

Challenge

  • The goal was to create additional benefits through digitalisation in the treasury and to find out whether digitalisation approaches and "real time" solutions can increase efficiency and security. In addition, the project aimed to find out whether new digital technologies (e.g. blockchain) can support financing issues or expand the catalogue of instruments on the financing side.

Project result

  • The questions were successfully answered using JPMorgan's API solutions and FQX's eNote solution.
  • The API solution created transparency on account balances and authorised signatories in real time and also made it possible to easily display this information in Excel, partly across banks.
  • eNote offered a secure, transparent and cost-effective financial instrument in the form of a digital promissary note stored on the SIX Blockchain.

Highlights

  • The API approach allows a flexible, quick-to-implement and straightforward solution to increase the transparency of bank balances across multiple banks in real time using a simple Excel front-end plugin.
  • eNote allowed an entry into C2C lending in Switzerland with lower external refinancing costs.

Project Manager:
Janko Hahn
Head Treasury Operations

Challenge

  •  The goal for the company in the horticulture sector was to find an alternative to classic trade credit insurance in order to increase transparency and resilience in the supply chain.
  • The provision of guarantees from the company's point of view should be automated and digitalised.
  • A digital solution was developed together with NORD/LB and Traxpay and enables suppliers to individually insure their delivery period and also to participate in a supplier early payment programme (dynamic discounting).

Project result

  • Typically, credit insurance is taken out by the supplier for at least one year and for the entire annual sales volume. In addition, the insurance payment rarely exceeds 100% of the defaulted amount of the receivable. The respective buyer has no possibility to actively influence this.
  • Now the commissioning of payment guarantees is digitised by the company. The programme allows suppliers to see the status of their invoices at any time and offers the option to have invoices credited in full at the desired time.
  • The platform also creates the invoice documents for guarantee commissions, which are automatically posted to the ERP system.

Highlights

  • The solution allows the bank to be connected without the need for technical integration or installation of software, as all functions can be used via the SAP plug-in.
  • The solution creates efficiency through a digitalised warranty process and fairness, as the validity of the warranty can be determined by the supplier.

Project manager:
Michael Maas
Head of Finance and Accounting Division

Project staff:
Patrizia Götz
Team Leader Accounts Payable

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Your advantages as a finalist

Tickets for the symposium

Each finalist will receive two free tickets to the 33rd Finance Symposium.

Project presentation in TreasuryLog

The finalists' projects will be published in TreasuryLog

EUR 5,000 for charitable purposes

Cheque for EUR 5,000 for a charity of his choice.

Innovations shape the future

Procedure

The Finance Symposium invites companies to nominate their unique project: Increasing process reliability, reducing risk, increasing productivity with the help of digitalisation, saving costs, increasing quality through automation and much more are suitable.

From the list of entries, a jury of business practitioners will select three finalists for the award.

The winner of the "Digital Treasury Excellence" will be selected by all participants via voting during the 33rd Finance Symposium.

The jury

Benjamin Altmeyer

Director Treasury Process & Application Management

REWE Group

Lukas Leuprecht

Group Treasury - Corporate Finance

Hofer Financial Services GmbH

Camillo Pachmann

CEO

MLreef GmbH

Andreas Sowa

Head of Treasury

McKesson Europe AG