S1 Corporation, a global provider of enterprise solutions to the financial services industry, has announced the introduction of the S1 Trade Finance Purchase Order Processing System (S1 POPS). The system was jointly developed with Bank of America and has been implemented by that financial institution. With this solution, S1 offers a single system that performs global trade-related purchase order processing and tracking for a bank’s entire trade finance customer base from smaller customers that use its trade finance client-access system to its large volume customers that interact with the bank via electronic data interchange (EDI). This provides financial institutions with tremendous flexibility and enhances the capability for straight-through processing under purchase order (PO) discrepancy handling.

S1 POPS accelerates the document payment process by performing automated examination of shipping documents against the original purchase orders from the buyer/bank client for letters of credit and open account transactions. The S1 POPS compliance engine performs automated discrepancy and variance checking by comparing the purchase order data supplied by the bank’s corporate customer with the shipment data entered by the bank’s staff. S1 POPS then reports payment and shipment information, as well as any discrepancies, back to the bank’s corporate customer. S1 POPS features include: automated and custom reporting; automated compliance checking of invoice date against purchase order line items; rapid data entry capabilities for bank staff with easy-to-use grids; and control of data at the PO level, PO line or sub-line level.
S1 POPS can run in parallel, or independently, with S1 Trade Finance, the S1 integrated system that delivers the ability to create and report on trade documents from Letter of Credit applications, direct collections and all other trade instruments. Export customers of financial institutions that use the S1 Trade Finance product along with S1 POPS further benefit by receiving their advices and transmittals with the PO and shipment terms. Once they ship, they can present the documents/invoices to the bank for payment.
“By releasing this comprehensive solution for purchase order processing and tracking, S1 again raises the standard for innovation in financial services,” says Steve Ely, senior vice-president worldwide marketing at S1 Corporation. “S1 POPS enables financial institutions to maximize revenue-generating relationships by streamlining the number of applications they need to serve all of their corporate customers.”

“S1 POPS has fulfilled our need for a single, worldwide system for processing purchase order data for all of our trade finance customers,” says Dan Scanlan, head of trade product management at Bank of America. “By implementing S1 POPS, we are able to provide our customers with end-to-end processing along the financial supply chain. It is a completely open system that allows customers and their trading partners to link with the bank using the method and formats that they want to use, instead of the other way around.”
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