ALEXIANER

About Alexianer

The origins of the healthcare provider Alexianer date back over 800 years, and the company’s mission is rooted in a tradition of values stretching back a millennium. However, its more recent history has been strongly characterised by inorganic growth. Due to hospital reforms and numerous insolvencies in the healthcare sector, the Alexianer Group took over many facilities between 2019 and 2024 and has almost doubled in terms of turnover, number of employees and companies within just five years. Today, the group consists of around 90 companies and employs some 34,000 staff, with a turnover of around €2.8 billion. Margins are traditionally low, as surpluses are consistently reinvested in social and medical projects in line with the company’s charitable mission. 

Managing such a significant financial leap within a short period of time requires clear structures and the appropriate expertise. For this reason, Alexianer brought Katja Steinkühler on board in 2023 as Head of the Treasury Department. She built up the Group’s treasury function – and turned to Nomentia for the necessary tools.

The challenges Alexianer faced before Nomentia

Before the project began, treasury and payment transactions at Alexianer were highly decentralised. Each company operated with its own bank accounts, processes and responsibilities, which made consolidation and transparency considerably more difficult.

“We had around 90 companies, each of which used its own electronic banking system. At the start, we didn’t even know exactly how many accounts there were in total. I initially assumed there were about 20 banks and 300 accounts – in fact, there were around 50 banks with up to 1,300 accounts, partly because we also manage residents’ pocket money accounts."

— Katja Steinkühler, Head of Treasury Department, Alexianer

The group’s IT landscape was also highly fragmented and offered little transparency: different accounting systems, several ERPs, and numerous subsystems for patient and resident billing. Payment transactions ran via a wide variety of banking portals, and manual intervention was part of everyday life:

“We had HR systems that generated payment files, which then required a technician to spend a day and a half manually adjusting the execution data. Data protection issues included”

— Katja Steinkühler, Head of Treasury Department, Alexianer

According to Katja Steinküher, the daily management of the cash pools was based on estimates rather than valid data. The weekly consolidation of hundreds of Excel spreadsheets into a group-wide liquidity report was time-consuming and prone to errors, with the data from the previous Friday already largely out of date. Furthermore, decentralised banking authorisations and local decision-making led to a lack of transparency regarding internal loans and guarantees.  

It was therefore clear to Alexianer: they needed a reliable database covering all bank accounts, standardised processes and greater cash transparency. In short: a central treasury platform.

The solution: Nomentia for payments, cash management and treasury

As Katja Steinkühler had already worked with a treasury management system in a previous role, she knew exactly what she required from a solution. The decision to choose Nomentia was made following a structured comparison of five providers. The decisive factors were, above all, the modular flexibility, user-friendliness, a modern web architecture, and the ability to fully map the complex corporate structure. German-language support was also an important factor.

“With Nomentia, you can clearly see that a great deal of expertise has gone into the solution and that the processes within it are really well thought out. And for us as a non-profit organisation, the value for money was simply right."

— Katja Steinkühler, Head of Treasury Department, Alexianer

To gradually establish treasury management at group level, Alexianer implemented the Nomentia modules for payment transactions, cash management, liquidity planning, and loan and guarantee management. To this end, several dozen banks were connected and interfaces were set up with the various accounting systems, ERPs, the new HR system and other subsystems.

As a next step, Alexianer also plans to introduce the Nomentia In-house Bank, where internal cash flows can in future be subject to interest and posted uniformly independently of the bank, thereby facilitating cash pooling.  

The results: Efficient and secure payments and full liquidity transparency

With Nomentia, Alexianer has been able to centralise its payment transactions and make them significantly more efficient. Approval processes and authorisations are now clearly structured and documented in an audit-proof manner. Confidential payroll runs can be processed directly from the HR system without manual intervention.

Bank statements are available automatically and even on an intraday basis. This has, for the first time, provided a complete and accurate view of available funds.

“Before Nomentia, our daily cash flow management was largely based on estimates. Today, we can manage our liquidity down to the last cent."

— Katja Steinkühler, Head of Treasury Department, Alexianer

Weekly liquidity planning, which previously took up to a day and a half to consolidate from over a hundred Excel files, now runs significantly more efficiently and error-free within the system. Combined with simplified target-actual comparisons, Alexianer can now produce much more precise liquidity forecasts.

“Thanks to the automatic target-actual comparison in Nomentia, we can immediately see which company has not planned properly and can react accordingly. In the long term, this significantly improves the quality of our liquidity planning.”

— Katja Steinkühler, Head of Treasury Department, Alexianer

The holistic view of cash flows now also includes loans, guarantees and investments, which are now managed centrally as well. The loan module maps all of Alexianer’s internal and external financing as well as investments – including maturity notifications, repayment schedules and extensions. Repayments and loans are generated directly from the module and will in future be settled via the in-house bank.

Overall, consistent data, informative dashboards and significantly greater transparency now provide a reliable basis for decision-making. At the same time, manual effort has been noticeably reduced and collaboration between the companies has been improved. The new structure thus creates a solid foundation for the further development of the Alexianer Group.