100% Volume Growth in Reconciliations Managed Through Technology-enabled Center of Expertise

Within finance and accounting, the reconciliations process is rife with inefficiency and lends itself well to driving improvements through shared services. The main drivers – standardization, risk mitigation, and cost control – are all met through automation technology available today, which has evolved to meet the needs of users. Some of the best practices currently in use are based on integrated end-to-end reconciliations that span the entire lifecycle of the process, from data input, to enriching and validating it, to scheduling actions. Managing exceptions – identifying as well as resolving them – in a standardized manner is a key factor in improving the reconciliations process. Wells Fargo's center of excellence for automated reconciliation has solved these issues through a neat, single, integrated solution from Fiserv, called Frontier. In a recent webinar, Kirk Kluempke, Business System Consultant and Product Manager RTS, and Nathan Ondricek, Apps Programmer Engineer, Recon Technology Services, both from Wells Fargo, demonstrated the positive impact that shared services wields for the reconciliation process. Together, they form one third of a six person Center of Excellence, which supports multiple customers for the company’s Trust Operations group. For this team, improvements are driven through the recs process by: loading both transaction and balance data tying balance information to detail transactions including identified exceptions providing an approval process for completed reconciliations; and offering a single view of the entire balance sheet including automated and manual reconciliations. Wells Fargo's automated reconciliation COE has driven significant gains for its customer base, mostly as a result of consolidating multiple reconciliation databases, providing a one-stop shop for reporting needs, saving FTEs, improving on match backs, and cutting down on time. These benefits are the result of improved standardization that supports consistent communication up the chain, as well as operational efficiencies resulting from consolidated technology, people and process integrations, and improved the onboarding of new reconciliations processes. The main challenges the reconciliation team faced back in in 2002 was different formatting across different operations. The partnership entered into with Fiserv at that time marked the beginning of a new journey of improvement, whereby the key goals were mitigating risk and saving money. Wells Fargo's approach, explains Ondricek, was to start small. There was no mandate from senior management to drive the shared services, but its work and scope has expanded as its reputation rose within the business. The trick, he explains, is to tackle one reconciliation type at a time, and see how the partnership works out. That approach limits any downside resulting from a mismatch of expectations. Quarterly or half yearly optimization meetings between the COE and its clients mean that there is always sufficient oversight of any changes on the client end, and the shared services has an opportunity to confirm the capability as well as the limitations of its technology tools. Close relationships with the technical group and the team at Fiserv, as well as the reconcilers for each of the lines of business, ensure that everyone is pulling in the same direction. Kluempke also cites SharePoint as a crucial communication tool for project tracking and communications. The center has seen a lot of growth through word of mouth internally. With the average volume of daily processing value having doubled since 2002, Kluempke and Ondricek cite improvements in exceptions management as instrumental in delivering efficiencies. What's clear is that the market demands one solution for integrated reconciliation services – not multiple, explains Kluempke. Today's Center of Excellence manages 3 million items and 500,000 balances daily, and has 120 reconciliation processes in scope. The stability of the current setup and technology means that the team is confident that it could take on growth of 200 to 300% within the current framework. Watch the webinar now: [eventpdf]

100% Volume Growth in Reconciliations Managed Through Technology-enabled Center of Expertise

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