iTnews

Westpac challenges ERP heavyweights over transaction inefficiencies

By Matt Johnston on Aug 21, 2019 6:59AM
Westpac challenges ERP heavyweights over transaction inefficiencies

Strikes partnership with Coupa.

Westpac has moved decisively to enable corporate financials departments to wrest back control of procurement and invoicing transactions from ageing ERP platforms and invoicing solutions that have for decades hamstrung broader upgrades.

The institutional wing of Australia’s oldest bank on Tuesday revealed it is pitching a new cloud-based procurement solution at customers that could break legacy lock-ins and disintermediate stalwarts SAP and Oracle.

The move is a big one because it pits the bank against big software suppliers, often seen as too slow to respond to local conditions like single touch payroll, against more nimble suppliers  

The key offer is to automate payments to suppliers, helping chief financial officers reduce risk, improve compliance, and save money through a tie-up with global business spend management (BSM) platform Coupa to complement the bank’s own e-invoicing, payments and reconciliation solutions.

Under the agreement, Westpac will act as a referral partner, shopping Coupa’s software-as-a-service offering to institutional clients who might be interested in integrating the BSM platform into their electronic resource planning (ERP) systems.

Actual integration of the platforms would most likely be done through one of Coupa’s channel partners, such as KPMG or Deloitte. 

Westpac Institutional Bank’s general manager of Global Transaction Services, Di Challenor, said that while most corporates have invested heavily in improving the way they receive payments from customers, “we haven’t seen the same advancements in how payments are made to suppliers”.

“In many cases, the payables process remains inefficient, paper-based, and prone to errors,” she said.

The same argument was put forward in a consultation process by the federal Treasury in October last year, where it noted that Australian businesses process around 1.2 billion invoices a year.

“Paper and email based invoicing is manually intensive and prone to human error resulting in increased processing costs and payment times for businesses,” Treasury said, noting that e-invoicing “is a clear opportunity to streamline invoice transactions, saving businesses time and money”.

“Our partnership with Coupa is the first major step towards frictionless supplier payments and delivering end-to-end automation across the working capital cycle,” Challenor said.

She added the combination of the Coupa’s BSM platform with Westpac’s digital payments and invoicing solutions should give CFOs real-time oversight into their organisation’s spending behaviour, “allowing them to proactively identify and address small problems before they turn into big issues”.

Estimates by Deloitte Access Economics put the benefits of e-invoicing to the Australian economy at $28 billion over ten years.

Got a news tip for our journalists? Share it with us anonymously here.
Copyright © iTnews.com.au . All rights reserved.
Tags:
cloud coupa einvoicing erp finance financeit westpac

Partner Content

MSI shows first laptops with Wi-Fi 6E, Nvidia RTX 30 graphics
Partner Content MSI shows first laptops with Wi-Fi 6E, Nvidia RTX 30 graphics
MSI launches innovative new laptops
Partner Content MSI launches innovative new laptops
Improving returns from SD-WAN spending
Sponsored Content Improving returns from SD-WAN spending
NCS expands into Australia in partnership with Optus Enterprise
Sponsored Content NCS expands into Australia in partnership with Optus Enterprise

Sponsored Whitepapers

The risky business of open source
The risky business of open source
Ensure your e-signatures are legally binding
Ensure your e-signatures are legally binding
Mitigating open source risk in your organisation
Mitigating open source risk in your organisation
How to choose a WAF that's right for you
How to choose a WAF that's right for you
The global telco 5G cloud gaming opportunity
The global telco 5G cloud gaming opportunity

Events

  • On-Demand Webinar: How Poly and Microsoft are Embracing Future Work Environments
  • Beat the DDoS blackmailers in 2021
By Matt Johnston
Aug 21 2019
6:59AM
0 Comments

Related Articles

  • Bendigo and Adelaide Bank pushes first workloads into AWS
  • Westpac signs Afterpay as first digital bank-as-a-service customer
  • Westpac online banking goes down after upgrade
  • Xinja deploys Kong to better control its APIs, microservices
Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Email A Friend

Most Read Articles

Telstra blasts plan to 'set aside' mobile spectrum for Optus and TPG, but not it

Telstra blasts plan to 'set aside' mobile spectrum for Optus and TPG, but not it

Accellion hack behind Reserve Bank of NZ data breach

Accellion hack behind Reserve Bank of NZ data breach

Google unravels state-of-art Android and Windows exploit chains

Google unravels state-of-art Android and Windows exploit chains

Tyro halts trading following week-long outage

Tyro halts trading following week-long outage

You must be a registered member of iTnews to post a comment.
Log In | Register
All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed in any form without prior authorisation.
Your use of this website constitutes acceptance of nextmedia's Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.