Based in London, Demica’s Implementation team serves clients across Europe, Middle East, the Americas and Asia, on a remote basis. As such, the Covid-19 crisis and the lockdown conditions have had little impact to our client implementations, in fact we have successfully gone live with a number of clients without any face-to-face contact.
The implementation process is key to the success of any new transaction and our focus is to streamline the process to ensure that our clients can monetise their working capital as soon as possible.
Implementation: what’s involved?
Demica’s Implementation team covers both payables and receivables solutions, supporting corporates and financial institutions. For corporate clients, Demica works closely with the treasury department and IT teams. For financial institution clients, taking Demica’s platform on a white label basis, the engagement is typically with stakeholders from working capital, operations, supplier onboarding, payments, IT, and commercial, as well as risk and security teams.
After an initial kick-off meeting, the implementation process includes the following steps:
- Requirements gathering – to determine the optimal solution
- Configuration of the platform
- Testing – data integration and user acceptance
- Platform demos and training
- Handover and go-live
The implementation team will continue to monitor and support new solution during the first few weeks post go-live, and will hand over to our Client Services team once comfortable that everything is working properly.
Demica is ISO/IEC 27001 (Information Security) certified and works with clients on the security and resilience of the solution during the implementation process. This includes reviewing data sovereignty requirements, GDPR and other data privacy concerns.
Streamlining the process
When it comes to ensuring a streamlined implementation, Demica focus on two key factors: First, Demica assigns a Project Manager who is responsible for guiding clients through the implementation process, ensuring the end-to-end delivery of the solution.
Second, Demica provides clear documentation that specifies data requirements and functionality on how data will be automatically transferred from their ERPs to Demica’s platform.
Demica recently implemented a multi-billion-dollar Trade Receivables Securitisation programme which included 13 currencies and 40 sellers around the globe. The programme is highly complex given the size and structure involving ten senior and three junior funding banks. Demica’s implementation team combined with our industry-leading platform, were vital in delivering the project in under three months meeting the client’s needs.
Certain obstacles may need to be addressed during the implementation process, such as data quality issues. Companies with multiple ERPs may generate similar data categorised in different ways. Demica is able to adapt those data quality issues and configure the platform to automatically handle these obstacles, helping the client clean up data in their systems.
It’s inevitable that smaller treasury teams would need to look outside of the treasury team for expertise and to rope people in, in a true multi-departmental project as opposed to it being solely treasury team led.
Richard Walker, Nomad Foods’ Group Treasurer
Implementation ‘best practices’ from a client’s perspective
- Ensure that the project has the right sponsorship
- Agree on the scope of the project early and highlight any changes as soon as possible
- Plan input from IT and procurement teams in advance
Uncertain times due to COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered widespread consequences far beyond the spread of the disease itself, so it has been essential for Demica to maintain focus on the implementation tasks at hand.
With many businesses working from home over the past four months, challenges to productivity, and capacity is expected; however, Demica has transitioned to fully remote work with no disruption to on-going implementations. Working remotely with our global clients represented little impact to our implementation process and services. We are able to support our clients in 17 different languages, acting quickly and efficiently to deliver best-in-class working capital solutions.
Communication and feedback
For any implementation, it’s essential to build strong relationships between the project teams. Demica works to achieve a clear understanding of how the client’s business works internally, and which stakeholders need to be involved in each workstream. After every implementation, Demica carries out a full review, both internally and with the client, to gather any feedback that could drive further improvements in the future.
Our team will guide our clients through their implementation and help them realise the benefits of our working capital solutions as quickly as possible. Demica’s experts will partner with them to optimise the solution to their needs while ensuring that the process is clear and straightforward.
Freddie Joyce, Demica’s Head of Implementation
Ultimately, a project’s implementation sets the foundation for its long-term success. As such, Demica follows a methodical yet flexible approach to streamline the process, minimising the effort needed from our clients.
For more information about Demica’s implementation services, get in touch.