HPD Software expand their horizons as they welcome Bibby on board

Transcription

1 BUSINESS MONEY Issue 232 February 2015 FEBRUARY 2015 Finance & Banking for Business ISSUE 232 HPD Software expand their horizons as they welcome Bibby on board Daily Business Money news at Simon Featherstone from Bibby Financial Services (left) and Kevin Day from HPD Software Subscription only +44 (0)

2 Expanding Horizons By Kevin Day, Chief Operations Officer, HPD Software At HPD Software our mission is helping business finance business. We are passionate about helping invoice finance providers deliver first class customer service more efficiently. We share the industry s aim of expanding the market for these working capital solutions and we support these growth ambitions by providing IT platforms that not only deliver improved performance and cost reductions now, but that provide a future-proof platform that can adapt to various product developments brought to market in the future. As the industry looks to Expand its Horizons in terms of market share, product development and improved customer experience, we stand equally committed to helping service providers offer more working capital solutions to more businesses, more efficiently in a more customer-centric way. Engaging with the Industry We have been partnering with this industry for over 25 years, in numerous countries around the world. We are specialists that Kevin Day have a deep understanding of the industry landscape, of the products and services currently provided, the developments on the horizon and of the market s ambition to be a mainstream form of business funding. We are perfectly placed to help expand the market and deliver IT platforms that support future product developments as well as improving the customer experience of your clients. We actively participate in industry events and support industry trade association activities all over the world. By attending these events we stay close to industry developments and can ensure that we are positioning our products strategically and delivering what the industry really needs. Bibby Financial Services Are on a Roll Recently we have been delighted to be working with Bibby Financial Services on their European roll out of HPD Software s Aquarius end-to-end processing platform. They have now successfully completed their 9th migration event to complete Phase One, meaning that the factoring and invoice discounting businesses in the UK, Ireland, Holland and Germany are operating on the single Aquarius platform; a fantastic milestone. Bibby Financial Services are the largest independent factor in the UK with a portfolio of over 3,200 clients. The transition to Aquarius has been achieved in 18 months, which is a huge achievement for an organisation of this size. The project has been excellently managed with a good governance structure that allowed the project team to keep focused on the roll out schedule. Innovative solutions were used to streamline the migration process and minimize the risks. Each migration event was planned in minute detail and run with military precision. Aquarius is hosted at HPD s ultra-robust, Tier 4 data centre and managed by HPD s Hosted Managed Services team. The system is installed on state-of-the-art technology to provide BFS with a platform to significantly grow its business and provide the excellence of service quality upon which it prides itself. The project has relied upon strong partnership and teamwork from everyone involved in the project and everyone should be really proud of what has been achieved. Simon Featherstone, Bibby Financial Services Global Chief Executive Officer, commented We are delighted with our colleagues at HPD Software and with the progress of this project which has represented a huge challenge to our business and look forward to our continuing working partnership into the future. Bibby Financial Services have a strong leadership team led by Simon, and have a clear vision for the growth and development of the business that necessitated an investment in IT solutions. We are delighted that Bibby Financial Services chose Aquarius and the HPD Software team and we look forward to a continuing close cooperation going forward February 2015

3 Many of the HPD Software team gathered at the company s headquarters Our People, Your Strength Our people and their knowledge of the invoice finance industry is the key to our success. Team HPD is made up of many people who have formerly worked in the industry, which gives us a wealth of knowledge that feeds directly into our product development strategies. Working closely with respected industry advisors and experts, such as Ted Ettershank and Paul Hancock, is an invaluable source of expertise. Both have been instrumental in shaping the invoice finance and ABL markets in the UK and are recognised and well respected around the world for their industry knowledge. We also listen. We take our client feedback very seriously, and have an active User Group and undertake Annual Client Surveys which ensure that we continue to develop our software and services in line with the feedback received. Helping You Offer More We believe that we have a key role to play in helping the industry offer more solutions and services to businesses. With process and cost efficiencies, we enable providers to achieve scalability and growth, not only of their portfolios, but also for their product offerings. Whether it is niche solutions to specific sectors, widening the scope of the finance provided (e.g. inventory and trade finance) or improved efficiencies which allow for competitive pricing, our software enables providers to compete with other forms of business funding. Improving the Customer Experience At HPD Software we are committed to helping providers be as cost effective and efficient as possible, whilst constantly improving the end customer experience. For example Gemini, our data extraction software, is easy to install and fully automates the sending of accounts receivable data from the client s accounting system to the provider. This capability opens up the possibility for offering overdraft-like facilities, secured on trade receivables. We have also pioneered mobile technology, to give customers access to their funding facility when they are on the move. These days, we expect the on-line and mobile services we experience as consumers to be equally accessible in our professional lives; we are committed to ensuring that the invoice finance industry can meet these expectations. Nordea United Recently we were pleased to announce the successful conclusion of the Nordea Finans project to implement Aquarius throughout the Nordic and Baltic regions. Nordea Finans now have a single implementation of Aquarius supporting over 3,000 clients covering seven countries, five currencies, seven languages and two time zones. The central project team, led by Elisabeth Ringblom, has worked closely with the HPD team to achieve this outstanding success. Maria Dunne managed the HPD side of the project which successfully helped Nordea to overcome the numerous challenges of this multi-country project. Close cooperation and commitment between the organisations underpinned the project and engendered a genuine spirit of partnership and camaraderie. This project has really exemplified that good people working with a common goal can achieve great things. We would like to congratulate the Nordea team on managing a successful implementation which represents an outstanding and perhaps unique achievement. We look forward to continuing cooperation with our professional colleagues and friends at Nordea Finans. February

4 Client Centric Success Stories From independent start-ups to established divisions of world-wide banks, we work with organisations around the world to enable them to offer best in class service with proactive risk control, workflow management and straight-through-processing. You can read about a number of our recent case studies within this piece. These case studies include welcoming on board a major client for us in the UK Bibby Financial Services, who have just introduced our operating platform, Aquarius, in four countries UK, Ireland, Holland and Germany. They described it recently as one of their landmark developments enabling their people and processes to best serve their top priority cultivating strong, long lasting customer relationships and improving their service to clients. We have the track record that demonstrates the flexibility of our systems, not only to provide complete straight-through-processing, but also to support different sized, multi-product businesses, in various commercial and legal environments from a single system. Expanding Horizons We have come a long way over recent years and have big plans for the future. With over 50 installations of Aquarius, around the world, we are in an excellent position to grow our user base. In the short term, we will be concentrating on developing our relationships within the UK and Irish markets, expanding our operations in the US and developing our Global Support Model from our offices in Australia. We are focused on investing in our products, people and services and to provide the industry with the best invoice finance and asset based lending software solutions. We are here to help expand the horizons of this fantastic industry and take it to the next level. As we say at HPD, it s all about helping business finance business. Cairo Factors Starting Out Cairo Factors is a new start-up factoring company based in Cairo, Egypt and we were delighted that they chose to launch their service powered by HPD s solutions. Cairo Factors is the fifth licensed financial institution in Egypt providing complete factoring services to SMEs. Gamal (Jimmy) Moharam, Chairman of Cairo Factors said We were looking at the various financial IT options for factoring companies; HPD s software solution was head and shoulders above the rest. We knew that they had a good reputation, proven technology and also already an existing live site in Egypt; so we knew that they were the right partner for us. Twelve months later, Cairo Factors have a respectable portfolio of 40 clients and are expanding rapidly. HPD Management Team. Back, from left: Gerry Turley, Glen Powell, Ted Ettershank and Nik Grove. Front, from left: Darryll Lewis, Kevin Day and Andrea Cole Join Us at our Annual Conference If you would like to find out more about HPD Software s products or services why not join us at our Annual Conference on Thursday 12th March 2015 at the May Fair Hotel in London. It is a great opportunity to find out more about our business, meet some of our existing clients, listen to guest speakers and get to know us better. To register your interest or to find out more about this free one day event please Nicola.breeze@hpdsoftware.com. At a Glance Industry Snapshot Asset Based Finance Association (ABFA) UK is the leading European market in the adoption and use of asset based finance Asset based finance now represents 15.7 per cent of the UK s GDP (compared to a European average of 8.5 per cent) Three months to September 30, 2014 was the biggest ever quarter for asset based finance in the UK Industry client numbers are still climbing EU Federation Total amount written has risen in 11 out of the 14 member countries of the EU Federation of Factoring & Commercial Finance (EUF), increasing by an average 7.6 per cent HPD Software Approaching 100 financial institutions Supporting over 60,000 clients In over 50 countries 36 February 2015

5