Knowledge Centre

Acorns Children's Hospice Trust offers nursing care and support to over 500 life limited or life-threatened children and their families living in the West Midlands, Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire. It has three children’s hospices that offer short breaks, nursing care, emergency and end-of-life care, and a community team that offers support at home. The majority of Acorns' income comes from donations. In 2003, Acorns offered its donors the option to contribute regularly by Direct Debit. Jo Gwilliam, Head of IT at Acorns, says: "We chose to adopt Direct Debit partly because it was a natural progression from standing orders, but more importantly because it gives us more information about when we will receive donations."...

ADP needed to pull together the finance operations for four main business units across the UK. They wanted to implement a solution which provided extensive security controls and delivered processing efficiencies within their payroll and finance departments.

Arriva needed help in streamlining their accounts operation. It was taking staff an unacceptably long time to find filed documents, and this was having an impact on the time, space and budgets that were available for other uses.

Aston Villa is a Barclays premier league football club with a rich tradition. The club was a founder member of the English Football League and, more recently, a founder member of the Premier League. Supporters enjoy state-of-the-art facilities at Villa Park, where the club runs a successful hospitality programme. At the start of the 2009/2010 season, the club wanted to make it easier for members to pay for hospitality. Tracy Piper, Sales Ledger Supervisor and Credit Controller, says: "We introduced Direct Debit to help our box holders break up the cost. Direct Debit helps our clients and covers us because we know we've got the money coming in."

“Given our high order volumes, paper invoices were simply creating too many inefficiencies,” said Doug Adams, European Supplier Finance Director. “For a number of our suppliers, however, EDI methods are not a viable option. As a result, we were devoting time and resources toward the manual processing of approximately 10,000 invoices per month.”

With AXA Wealth’s requirement for speed of implementation, both Altus and Bottomline were comfortable that they could meet the challenge and indeed, within 3 months from the project kick-off, AXA Wealth processed live messages across the SWIFT network.

The SWIFT connectivity project went live for BAE Systems’ foreign currency payments in January 2011 and SWIFT is now used for all MT101 foreign currency transactions. In March 2011, BAE began receiving MT300 confirmation messages over SWIFT.  The next stage of the project will involve sending sterling payments via the bureau. This is predicted to increase SWIFT payment volumes by 110%.

BEA needed help in bringing together the supplier invoicing functions for 16 countries.

Bank of New York needed help in managing ISA application volumes between February and April, without having to employ large numbers of additional staff.

Breakthrough Breast Cancer is a leading breast cancer charity in the UK. It aims to save lives by improving the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer. The charity encourages regular giving from donors and wants to make it easy to donate. As a result, it became a paperless Direct Debit service user so that donors could set up Direct Debits online. It's important for the charity to make every donation count and it needs to process Direct Debits efficiently. Elsie McGinn, Gift Administration Supervisor at Breakthrough Breast Cancer, says: "We don't want to miss any donations, so we have to process things quickly and within agreed timescales. There is quite a lot we need to be aware of to do this and we need to make sure we comply with the Bacs regulations."

Castle Cement needed to consolidate their administrative functions and make the move towards electronic documents, thereby saving time, manpower and space.

Thanks to our payment solutions software, Cheshire County Council can now hand responsibility for sending its own Bacs files to the payroll department. Using the system, the council has seen increased security and efficiencies throughout its payment and collection process.

National Australia Bank (NAB) is an international financial services group. It operates in the UK through the Clydesdale Bank and Yorkshire Bank. In 2005, NAB wanted to automate processes involved in collecting Direct Debit from its Clydesdale Bank mortgage customers. The bank worked with global payments experts Direct Debit Limited to implement a sophisticated Direct Debit management system, Direct Debit expert™ (DDe™). Tracy Anne Marsland, Business Analyst at NAB, says: "DDe™ made a massive difference. It improved the efficiency of collections; reducing the time and effort that went into managing Direct Debits." In 2008, NAB wanted to offer cash Individual Savings Account (ISA) customers the option to pay by Direct Debit, so it turned to Direct Debit Limited again.

Colony had been using WinBacs since 1998. With employee numbers varying on a seasonal basis, Colony knew that WinBacs was ideal for their purchase ledger and payroll needs. However, being a forward-looking company, they decided the time was right to migrate to Bacstel-IP. They came to us as we’d provided their original WinBacs solution and they were delighted with the service we provided.

When Computacenter decided to upgrade its existing AS/400 operating system, it found that the document merge product was no longer a part of the solution. This led the company to look for a new solution that would also help it to improve the quality of its documents and move away from expensive pre-printed stationery. The company chose Create!form® software because of its wide range of output options, competitive price and previous positive experience with an earlier product.

CORGI were keen to implement a Bacstel-IP solution quickly to meet their specific business needs. After investigating different suppliers and their solutions, CORGI chose our payment solution for their new Bacstel-IP software.

Downing is a leading property group in the North West of England. It has a diverse portfolio of projects in the private and public sectors, which includes The Capital Car Park in Liverpool. Downing wanted to offer car-park users the option to pay by Direct Debit. Sarah Mills, Financial Controller at Downing, says: "We thought Direct Debit would offer customers an easy way to pay, while protecting the company from bad debt." As a result, Downing approached its bank to find the most efficient way to collect by Direct Debit.

The Environment Agency is a public body responsible for protecting and improving the environment. It issues licences for commercial waste operations and grants fishing licences to 1.5 million anglers across the UK. In 2000, commercial businesses or individuals could only buy environmental licences by cheque. However, like other public bodies, the Environment Agency was under increasing pressure from central government to become more customer-oriented. In addition, the organisation wanted to process its payments more efficiently. It found processing cheques and cash resource intensive and these payments made it difficult to manage cash flow. As a result, the agency decided to extend its range of payments to include Direct Debit.

Greenthumb is the largest lawn care company in the UK with more than 450,000 customers and 208 franchises throughout the country. The company wanted to offer customers the option to pay by Direct Debit. David Griffiths, Finance Director at Greenthumb, says: "People want to pay by Direct Debit. They don't want to write a cheque or put cash on the windowsill. Direct Debit is a lot easier for customers." Greenthumb also recognised that Direct Debit offered the company and its franchisees a number of benefits. "Direct Debit helps us up sell," says Griffiths. "Most customers have around five treatments a year from us. We used to invoice them for this and they paid every 10 weeks. But if you offer people the option to pay monthly by Direct Debit, it makes their bill more manageable, which means they're more likely to buy additional services."

Offices in the UK provided computing services for its Brackely, Paris, Frankfurt and Amsterdam operations through an IBM AS/400 platform. The system produced invoices, order acknowledgements, credit notes and return reports, but each location used its own pre-printed stationery.

Hastings Direct urgently needed a new system to produce electronic forms. After evaluating six different software packages the company chose a Bottomline’s solution, which met all of the company’s pressing needs including flexibility and ease-of-use. The company’s 30 electronic forms and standard letters are now designed and printed using Create!form® software.

IMES is the market leading maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) supplier in Belgium. IMES operates within a multilingual market and must ensure traceability of their products through the supply chain.

Transform has enabled this process to be automated, substantially reducing cost and the risk of errors. Transform has also enabled IMES to completely customise inbound and outbound document processing as well as enabling the interconnection of disparate core systems resulting from corporate acquisitions.

The Institute of Physics is a scientific charity that aims to help people understand physics and its applications. The membership team at the institute collects subscriptions from around 36,000 members. It had been using a bureau service to collect Direct Debit payments. However, the team decided it could save money by collecting Direct Debits in-house. Ewa Uszkiewicz, Membership Officer at the Institute of Physics, says: "We decided to do it ourselves because it was costing us a lot of money. In particular, if there was an error when we sent the data to the bureau, they charged us for that error."

The company wanted to produce more professional purchase orders to reflect its status within the industry and underscore its reputation. It considered a number of options, including relatively recent releases from some industry giants...

“Connecting and maintaining access to the SWIFT network requires expert knowledge. We therefore wanted to work with a specialist and chose to partner with Bottomline Technologies and deployed their SWIFT Access Service. Their consultants were accredited SWIFT professionals, who guided us through the process from the initial SWIFT application through setup, testing and finally, go live."

King’s College Hospital’s Procurement department influences an annual budget of £120 million and deals with around 1500 suppliers each year. The existing purchasing process had several serious deficiencies...

The company’s existing system was time consuming and labour intensive. They wanted to print labels quickly and efficiently.

Moorcroft is one of the largest debt-recovery agencies in the country. The company has expanded rapidly since it started in 1989 and it now works for a large number of blue-chip clients. The number of customers in Moorcroft's payment system reflects the company's success. It collects payments from more than 1.3 million individuals. In the past, Moorcroft relied on cheques, standing orders and even post office books to collect money from its payers. These collection methods were relatively costly and required Moorcroft's customers to initiate the payment process. Moorcroft wanted to change this and take control of setting up payments. The company decided that the best way to do this was to introduce Direct Debit collections.

Friskies Europe needed to automate their purchase invoice payments, consolidating 30 accounting locations which in turn supported 21 factories and their Head Office.

NWF Fuels supplies oil products throughout England and Wales and has an annual turnover in excess of £200 million. The company is one of Texaco's largest distributors in the UK. In the past, NWF Fuels experienced problems with its Direct Debit collections. Employees had to send paper mandates manually to the bank, which often took two weeks to become active. In addition, mandates were often lost in the post and NWF Fuels experienced high numbers of rejected payments. The company found that the associated administration was time consuming and that it was losing credibility with its customers when payments failed.

The PGA needed help with their document management system in order to save space and improve efficiency. They wanted improved traceability and case management, as well as being able to see all documents for every member in chronological order.

St Barnabas Hospices is a charity that provides palliative care to adults and children through two hospices in Worthing and the surrounding area. In May 2008, the hospice ran a campaign for donors to sponsor a room at its children's hospice, Chestnut Tree House. St Barnabas wanted to encourage regular giving with the campaign. However, regular donations traditionally came in the form of standing orders, which were time-consuming and difficult to administer. Diane Lawrence, Finance Manager at St Barnabas Hospices, says: "We don't have control over when standing orders come out or when they're going to hit our account. Also, we have to send forms to the bank, so it's a very time-consuming method."

Simon Jersey’s system for printing financial documents was expensive and time-consuming. The clothing company needed a solution that would speed up document production and enhance international operations.

Standard Bank is South Africa's largest bank. It also operates in 17 African countries and 16 countries outside of Africa. HSBC sponsors the bank's operations in Jersey and the Isle of Man to act as paying banks for customers that want to pay by Direct Debit. To provide customers with the best service, the bank's staff in Jersey wanted to ensure that they were fully up to date with the rules of the Direct Debit scheme and the responsibilities of a paying bank. In particular, the team wanted to look at A services and to make sure that they were fully familiar with the requirements. Jonathan Reynolds, Director of Offshore Operations, Standard Bank, says: "The scheme has developed over the years and, as a bank on the fringe of it, we wanted to ensure we were up-to-date and fully understand the implications and requirements."

Stryker Spine were looking for a way of improving their procurement and payment workflow. They needed a solution which would ensure compliance with Sarbanes Oxley and, due to the nature of their products, one which would enable them to maintain complete traceability of all purchased items for quality control.

Sun’s training course administrators wanted to tackle their growing paper mountain and improve Customer Service by implementing a document management system that was cost effective, workable and fast to implement. Before implementing the Bottomline (formerly HMSL) solution, a team of 6 people were each spending one to two hours per day in front of filing cabinets rather than helping customers.

Swale Heating installs and services central heating systems. Many of its customers pay for their service and maintenance contracts by Direct Debit. In the past, this meant considerable amounts of manual administration for Swale Heating's finance department. The company had Bacstel-IP software, but only submitted instructions to Bacs and didn't automate Direct Debit workflows. As a result, the team had to deal with Automated Direct Debit Amendment and Cancellation Services (ADDACS) reports manually from a spreadsheet. Kevin Thomas, Company Accountant at Swale Heating, says: "It used to take each member of the team two to three hours a month to amend customer details on our database and on the .csv files we submitted to Bacs. This increased the possibility of mistakes occurring between the two systems”.

From their shared service centre on the outskirts of Manchester, TDG handle the majority of the back office functions for the group across the UK and Europe. With around 8,000 suppliers submitting in excess of a quarter of a million invoices each year, the accounts payable workload is substantial and any efficiencies will have a significant effect on TDG’s costs.

Thames Water was looking to establish itself as a ‘best in class’ service provider. As part of this drive, it wanted to streamline its internal processes, improve efficiencies and reduce costs. One of the areas Thames Water needed to strengthen was its accounts payable department. The existing system was laborious, inaccurate and time consuming with up to 6,000 ‘work in progress’ invoices being handled manually.

Threadneedle needed help in managing large volumes of leases, contracts and legal documents for its property operation. Property conveyancing is a document intensive process. For each transaction legal documents and property particulars will typically be copied six times and distributed to buyers, sellers and legal teams. Such a paper-intensive process creates a burden on clerical staff and consumes large amounts of storage space.

The Unipart Group is a leading full service logistics provider that also delivers consultancy services in operational excellence and supply chain. Unipart Merchandise, a subsidiary of the group, provides merchandise such as caps, key chains and clothing for customers such as Jaguar and Landover. The company recognised that Direct Debit was the most efficient way to collect payment from its customers. Susan Cummings, Financial Controller at Unipart, says: "We want to get as many of our customers to pay by Direct Debit as we can - simply because it’s more economical to collect by Direct Debit. At the moment, more than 70% of our UK clients pay by Direct Debit." When Unipart set up the Merchandise division, it needed to find software to help collect payments using the Automated Direct Debit Instruction Service (AUDDIS).

Warranty Direct is the UK's leading provider of extended warranties. The business has grown considerably over the last four years, but Warranty Direct continues to focus on providing its customers with great service. Many of Warranty Direct's customers pay by Direct Debit. In the past, the company outsourced these collections. However, in 2005, Warranty Direct decided it could give customers a better service by bringing its Direct Debit operations in house. Sandy Jenkinson, Operations Manager at Warranty Direct, says: "Customers would ask if they could change the date of their Direct Debit, but because we'd outsourced it, we weren't in control of when and how quickly that could be done."