Payments efficiency through automation

The challenge

As the company scaled, outsourcing of its software development function overseas became an attractive option. Maintaining good relations with overseas developers and retaining this talent was fundamental to the growth and overall efficiency.

Blue Optima’s requirement to pay out in exotic currencies (Indian Rupee and Mexican Peso) unearthed some inefficiencies in the current payments process. Developers had to be paid on time in India using local currency and the business also had to make intercompany money transfers to its facility in Mexico.

Making 80 payments per month proved to be a time-consuming task given that each payment was manually keyed, approved and processed.

Added to this, the complex nature of exotic currency delivery meant that some payments were returned due to regulatory and compliance issues around delivery to certain countries. Furthermore, the manual nature of keying data could also result in errors, adding to a longer payment cycle.

The business was keen to make the international payments process more efficient.

“Our finance staff were spending 13 hours per month processing payments—we needed a system to streamline and automate in order reduce time spent on manual processes.”

The solution

Fexco was recommended to BlueOptima for its proficiency in delivering complex, exotic payments. BlueOptima was also drawn to Fexco’s ‘innovative payments technology supported by real people’ tagline, as easy access to support was also a deciding factor in its choice of payments provider.

“Fexco’s collaborative team-based support ensures BlueOptima’s payments are processed efficiently with very few human touchpoints. This has greatly increased efficiency, reducing the time spent processing payments to a matter of minutes each month instead of hours.”

Before Fexco, the finance team were manually keying data and chasing down approvals for outgoing payments. Fexco’s automation-focused cloud platform enables the business to achieve a straight-through processing rate of over 99% for its international payments. Considering the industry standard is just 94%, the improvements were obvious.

Today the finance team now has more time to add strategic value to the business. The added efficiency with financial data management has also been beneficial. Fexco’s payments reports provide insights into cash flow and give management the data necessary for budgeting and auditing purposes.