Citi Treasury and Trade Solutions
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PVT had to be completed within a very short
two to three-week window between SAP cutover
and the first batch of accounts payable files due
later that month across all 11 countries. The
project also had to fit seamlessly with
a number of other organizational changes
including implementing Citi local accounts and
banking services in three major countries for the
first time, working around local language
considerations in China and Japan. Given these
dynamics, this first phase by itself was a very
ambitious project, both in terms of what was
required and the timeframe involved.
In addition to the first phase, after the initial
SAP project was successfully completed, CSC
planned to create a fully automated multi-entity,
multi-currency notional pool which would:
• Create a robust, homogeneous banking platform
• Reduce local business units’ reliance on
bilateral intercompany funding
• Centralize excess fungible cash into Singapore
• Auto-fund any short entities on a daily basis
• Be easily visible to global treasury around the
world
• Be easily controlled in-region by the new
treasury hub in India.
The quantifiable benefits of this new regional
pooling structure would include a reduction in
cost associated with the bilateral intercompany
loans, minimized FX swap costs, reduced ongoing
treasury administration, minimized funding
costs through natural offset of short-term
borrowing positions, and easy access to a
centralized pool of liquidity concentrated daily
from multiple countries.
The Solution
The first phase of the project to migrate SAP
onto a new global instance was launched in
January 2013. To enable accounts payable
processes to migrate into India, CSC began to
implement host-to-host connectivity using Citi’s
unique ERP integrator solutions which would
create XML file format. Citi’s ERP integrator is
an extremely useful tool used by over 40 global
multinational companies, which takes raw SAP
master vendor information and formats the data
into an XML format which Citi’s banking platform
understands. Without this integrator solution, it
would have been impossible to create XML files
from scratch that contained all of the
required payment types across each of the 11
countries in only four months. Using the ERP
integrator solution saved significant project time
and meant that fewer IT resources needed to be
reassigned from the global SAP consolidation
project to the bank integration project.
With the time and resources savings, the CSC
treasury and operations project teams could
focus on preparing for host-to-host connectivity
by implementing encryption, refreshing master
vendor data to be compliant with XML standards
so that the data was in the right format in the
old SAP system and could be quickly imported
into the new system. By using the ERP
integrator, the Citi project team was able to
highlight SAP data deficiencies faster. The
master vendor data could then be cleaned and
retested. After SAP cutover, and despite the two
to three-week turnaround, PVT was successful
for the first payment runs.
Implementing Citi’s ERP integrator was a
10-minute import activity, but once completed,
Citi’s technology solution ensured CSC could
embark on the ambitious migration project with
confidence. After go-live, CSC had implemented a
robust, XML-based, host-to-host accounts
payable solutions which helped smoothen the
migration of SSC processing from Singapore to
India. Despite the pressure, CSC was able to meet
its tight April 1 deadline and the SSC team in India
processed the first batch of payments later that
month from the new SAP instance successfully.
The second phase of CSC’s regional treasury
transformation project kicked off shortly after
the file integration project went live across all 11
countries. The Citi and CSC teams worked
closely to dimension the most optimal multi-
currency pool solution that would involve the
maximum number of countries working within
the region’s unique regulatory frameworks.
Singapore was selected to be the center for the
new regional pool.
Automated cross-border sweeps to move
end-of-day net excess or short positions from
nine jurisdictions and seven currencies into
mirror pool accounts opened by each entity with
Citi in Singapore. Then at the end of each day,
Citi’s multi-entity, multi-currency notional pool
nets short entities against long entities to offset
short-term overdraft funding costs whilst
eliminating intercompany loans.
Implementing Citi’s ERP integrator was a 10-minute
import activity, but once completed, Citi’s technology
solution ensured CSC could embark on the ambitious
migration project with confidence.
