Year founded
1638
Industry
Transportation, Logistics, Supply Chain and Storage
About
Posti is one of the leading delivery and fulfillment companies in Finland, Sweden and Baltics, offering a wide range of postal, logistics, freight, and eCommerce services.
The company has the widest network coverage in Finland, and is visiting around three million households and companies every weekday. Posti Group Corporation is a public limited company owned entirely by the Finnish state and employs approximately 20,000 people.
Challenge
Fragmented payment transactions created a lot of work and time was wasted correcting mistakes. The introduction of SEPA meant that a renewal of the system to meet the demands of international payment transactions could not be avoided.
Solution
Posti’s payment transactions in Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden, Norway, Germany, and Poland are now centralized through the Nomentia Payment Factory in the form of ISO 20022 payment transactions. Payment Factory services are handled at Posti’s payment transaction unit, which also takes care of the majority of Posti’s financial management processes.
Complete control with a centralized payment transaction solution
Katriina Järvenpää, who is responsible for financial development projects at Posti Group, is very satisfied with the Nomentia solution. System problems are now a thing of the past and the Group’s new payment transaction software solution is functioning smoothly on its own. The Payment Factory solution handles the majority of Posti Group's payment processes centrally and in a controlled way.
Let’s return to the fall of 2011 for a moment:
The Posti Group’s payment transaction system was heavy and multidimensional and had become more and more challenging to manage over the years.
"We constantly had problems with payment transactions outside Finland in particular, and the payment transaction system in use at that time was no longer able to adapt to Posti Group’s diverse needs. Problems were reported all the time, and payment transaction experts had to spend a great deal of time and effort solving these problems."
Katriina Järvenpää, Financial Development, Senior Manager at Posti Group
When Järvenpää was later faced with the transition to SEPA, she decided to take action and look for a flexible and efficient solution to help improve Posti Group’s payment transaction processes.
The solution was provided in the form Nomentia's centralized payment transaction software that has been a big hit with everyone.
"We are very satisfied with the Nomentia solution. It felt like the right choice straight away. The Nomentia team possesses so much in-depth knowledge and it has been a pleasure working with them. They have dealt with all our special requests and provided help every time we needed it."
Katariina Järvenpää
During the implementation project, payment transaction experts play a key role. Posti was, of course, already familiar with Nomentia's solutions. Nomentia was already responsible for Posti’s accounts payable, accounts receivable, general ledger and payment transactions. The payment transaction experts at the service center also use the Payment Factory and they were involved with the implementation project from the very beginning.
"The payment transaction experts tell us that the new system is user-friendly and speeds up everyday work."
Outi Väätäinen, team leader at Nomentia who looks after Posti Group’s payment transactions
At first, the project was carried out at Posti’s locations in the Baltic countries, because various companies were implementing SAP at that time. As Nomentia Payments was implemented there first, we were able to test the new system and then would make any necessary changes as needed.
"When we were satisfied that the Payment Factory functioned well in the Baltics, we were then able to replicate the system for implementation in the other countries."
Outi Väätäinen
"Payments were previously taken care of locally and through various systems, so it was obviously very difficult to keep track of everything. Now we have a system that functions smoothly: All payments go through the same process, which is the same in each country."Katriina Järvenpää
Over 15,000 payments daily
Posti’s payment volume is huge: the number of daily transactions can exceed 15,000. Posti’s financial processes are taken care of with SAP ERP software. It collects all the purchase invoices from the systems in Posti’s international units and then Nomentia Payments solution transforms the data into SEPA-compatible ISO 20022 C2B payment messages. Payments currently handles Posti’s payment transactions for Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden, Norway, Germany and Poland. The largest payment batches are processed as SEPA payments.
Direct banking connections
From the beginning one of Posti’s demands was to have harmonized bank connections covering all countries Posti is operating in. They wanted to have streamlined secured channels for daily communication.
"With a solid base, it is easier to add new accounts into the structure. With this solution we were able to have the necessary coverage and improve straight-through processing."
Katriina Järvenpää
Improved treasury management starts with Nomentia
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