Korper ICT

Contact: Erik van der Meijde - SNS Bank, Benjamin Korper - Korper ICT

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Background

SNS Bank NV is a financial services provider engaged in banking, with a particular focus on the Dutch retail market, including small and midsized enterprises. In the banking and finance industry, the ability to process a high volume of file transfers quickly, accurately, and securely is essential. Fortunately, when SNS needed a reliable automation solution to handle their file transfer processes, they turned to Korper ICT, an organization specializing in providing clients with workload and business process automation solutions. Korper is a HelpSystems Platinum Partner striving to help companies like SNS speed up or completely automate business processes, and they introduced SNS to AutoMate BPA Server.

The Challenge

Every day, files need to be transferred between De Nederlandische Bank (the central bank of Holland) and SNS Bank. Before implementing AutoMate, SNS was managing this process through DOS scripting. This solution was difficult to manage in several ways. DOS files are very limited in their capabilities, and when new features were required for the transfer process, it was difficult to build them into the existing scripts. Compounding the problem, batch programming is an old-fashioned type of scripting which newer graduates are unlikely to have learned, making it a challenge to find the human resources to edit and manage the scripts. The bank was in need of a flexible automation tool that could keep their file transfer processes up-to-date without a lot of extra effort.

The Solution

An employee at SNS learned about business process automation with AutoMate BPA Server and started a free trial. In just one week, the employee used AutoMate to replicate the file transfer process that had taken five years to create with batch scripting. He brought the software to the attention of his manager, who recognized the potential of simple, fast, process automation. SNS had other automation tools and scripts in place, but what set AutoMate apart was its powerful FTP engine. The bank soon found that automating the original file transfer process was only the beginning of how AutoMate’s FTP capabilities could make a difference to operations.

The Benefits

Thanks to AutoMate BPA Server, SNS bank now enjoys greater flexibility and control over their file transfer processes. Because AutoMate employs an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, the number of employees that can manage the transfers has greatly increased from the days of DOS scripting. Auditability has also improved. The DOS scripts did not have strong logging capabilities, whereas AutoMate can keep a detailed event record. Since automating the original file transfer process two years ago, SNS has expanded AutoMate BPA Server’s use across the organization. Currently AutoMate manages 210 workflows, 80 percent of which make use of its powerful FTP engine.