Proven Programme for Pan-European System

 

This article first publsihed by Asset Finance International

 

White Clarke Group (WCG) was a very early provider of pan-European solutions, starting as far back as the mid 1990s. It currently has implementation in 10 countries with Ford, five countries with Austrian bank BAWAG, eight countries with GMAC, three countries currently (and four in the pipeline) with Leaseplan, three countries with John Deere Credit and eight countries with truck manufacturer PACCAR.

 

Brendan Gleeson, global sales and marketing director at WCG told Asset Finance Europe: “We currently have pan-European and global implementations in some 25 countries and on all continents. We have multi-currency, multi-company and multi-country end-to-end solutions across Europe, ranging from the small scale to large scale book.”

 

 

Local staff

 

“Most importantly, we recognised the need to have local staff on the ground and, consequently, we have positioned ourselves to serve a global marketplace. Today, the group employs over 500 professionals around the world. They operate from three regional centres – Toronto for North America, Sydney for Asia/Pacific, Munich for Europe, and Milton Keynes, our head office and development centre.”

 

WCG group also has subsidiaries in Austria, Dubai, the US and China and has consultants working in South America, Africa and the Middle East.

 

Significant challenges

 

Gleeson stressed that the challenges for the Pan-European implementation of technology for the asset finance sector are very significant. Without the right kind of experience and technology the project risk of failure grows exponentially.

 

“If we look at the recent issues faced by even the very large vendors like SAP & Oracle,” Gleeson said, “we can see the lack of asset finance specialization is a serious and expensive drawback despite their pan-European general capability.”

 

“Conversely if we look at the poor pan-European implementation track record of the more niche vendors in our sector, we see their lack of technology capability and dated platform as key risks - despite their UK-based asset finance experience. The bottom line is you have to have not only the functional specialization but also the successful pan-European experience, and the technology.

 

CALMS² overcomes challenges

 

Gleeson stressed that WCG no longer looks on multi-lingual or multi-currency modules as being a challenge. “Nor,” he added, “do we any longer view the mundane requirements such as the need to handle multiple-accounting treatments or multiple reporting requirements as significant issues. These are technology issues we have long since overcome. We even allow end customers themselves to configure their own screen and use whatever language they wish…even Chinese.”

The release of WCG’s CALM² platform (launched this February) and its use of WEB 2.0 technologies, Gleeson believes, proves these points.  The CALM2 credit bureau component already links to over nine European credit bureaus, all in a single system. Since its launch, CALMS² delivers all the benefits of the CALMS platform, together with interactive information sharing, interoperability, user centered design and collaboration across the web. It offers a multi-channel seamless service exchange across company borders and between business partners.

 

“What remains a challenge,” explained Gleeson, “and where the real value-added focus needs to be, is on the cultural and organizational issues to be addressed. We need to be able to help our client ‘think through’ a pan-European implementation, something that is really a massive change programme.  This is where our consultancy skills are crucial.  Just what sort of pan-European programme will work will depends on the organization in question. Some organizations have a strong central ‘one size fits all’ culture and so they drive very hard for standardized processes.”

 

“Others are much more diverse and seek implementations at the other end of the scale - and there is a whole range in between. The technology platform has to be able to support all of these. The power of WEB 2.0 technologies is a really key differentiator in this area, allowing for a radically different look and feel for each country, all delivered from a single platform.   Business processes can be configured and personalized to individual ends.”

 

Leveraging the business

 

In providing pan-European solutions, providers need to recognize that some large scale operations, particularly within the captive environment, have a long term commitment to the SAP Netweaver and Oracle frameworks for their manufacturing business and have made significant investment in SAP infrastructure which they wish to leverage in their finance business.

 

For example multi-country SAP Financials modules are common in Europe and they goes beyond mere GL implementation. These represent a significant investment which can be leveraged. 

 

“WCG has many such customers,” Gleeson said, “and that is why we have developed our platform to handle both the SAP (Netweaver) and Non-SAP (J2EE) users – a capability that we believe no other vendor has.

 

Twin-track strategy

 

In its recent launch of CALMS2, WCG announced a twin track back office strategy allowing different levels of integration, flexed to the client’s existing investment. The first option is end-to-end pure Java. The second is a Java-SAP-compliant solution.

Gleeson explained; “In the first we provide completely independent java-based contract administration (because lots of people don’t believe that SAP can do contract administration) that ‘books into’ the SAP FI Financial Accounting. It includes Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable, linking to the SAP General Ledger. There is a high degree of flexibility around the level of detail we pass to SAP. The cash management remains within SAP because they have a good methodology. We then take back arrears and delinquencies from SAP into CALMS2 - It’s a bi-directional interface. So clients get the current arrears and they can look at the risk in the context of the entire contract.”

 

“The second option is for companies with a ‘hard core’ SAP Netweaver technology landscape - who seek a back office administration system - to leverage that investment, yet still gain the benefits of a specialist automotive or fleet finance technology platform.”

 

He added: “As with our J2EE platform, it manages the full contract lifecycle from activation, through financial amendments and restructuring to settlement and maturity. This is a proven solution that is operating across a multi-country, multi-currency environment.”