Michael Valmidiano, treasury systems and project manager at Toyota Financial Services North American treasury in California, is excited about the opportunities to automate and improve many of his department’s repetitive tasks using OmniFi, the financial reporting, reconciliation, testing and systems integration platform from SkySparc. “We originally took OmniFi for its reporting capabilities, but the functionality has developed so much since then,” he comments. “It’s really changing the way we look at tasks and adding huge value for us.”

TFS runs Wallstreet Suite v7.1 within its North American treasury and manages unsecured long and short-term debt issuance for the region in all the major currencies. The on-going challenge for Valmidiano’s team is to ensure treasury has accurate, up-to-date data whenever it needs it, however it needs it. Until recently, this has required a great deal of manual work to keep the static and transaction data in internal systems up to date. But now the team is using OmniFi to automate some key tasks, saving time and also increasing the accuracy and quality of handling detailed data changes.

“When we introduced a Commercial Paper program for a Canadian subsidiary, we used OmniFi to automatically load some 200 transactions – it was fast, but also more reliable and more systematic than manual loading. And we also used OmniFi to test the data,” explains Valmidiano. This success encouraged Valmidiano to tackle other repetitive and resource-intensive tasks within his team and he asked SkySparc’s consultants to configure OmniFi to automate some key deliverables.

The first of these was the recurring need to load and test static data for asset-backed securities. This was a time-consuming task because of the complex configuration needed in its treasury management system. There are up to 30 accounting mapping rules for each portfolio which maps several different cashflow types and general ledgers.

This is where the specialist skills of SkySparc’s consultants were invaluable. Working to TFS’ specifications, SkySparc configured OmniFi to automate this task, setting up and testing all the mapping rules within OmniFi and configuring the GUI to be very user-friendly. As a result, data entry is now eliminated and the task can be run whenever required in just a few clicks, without any specialist skills. It now takes about 20 minutes to run, compared to around three hours when data entry was required, and with a far greater level of accuracy.

Uploading fixing quotes for amortizing swaps and bond transactions is another regular, monthly task for the TFS team. As with the ABS data, each new piece of data must be mapped to relevant cash flows, and the correct fields updated. This task is also now automated and runs about nine times faster in OmniFi, without manual intervention or data input. Most recently, TFS has used OmniFi to automate the migration and testing of new treasury products from the test to the production environment. Here again, Valmidiano has been impressed with the speed and accuracy of the automated process - the time required for this task has been reduced from hours to minutes.

OmniFi is adding considerable value through saving time and valuable treasury resource, and also by improving the reliability and accuracy of repetitive data processing. - Michael Valmidiano, treasury systems and project manager, Toyota Financial Services

TFS can now run key repetitive processes automatically, without manual work. Specialist treasury staff no longer need to spend time mapping the data for each process on every occasion. Valmidiano estimates the department is already saving considerable time by using OmniFi for these new tasks, and he expects much greater savings in the future, when more activities are automated. Also, by automating the tasks, the types of errors that occur as a result of repetitive, manual data loading are eliminated, improving the overall quality of data and associated business process.

“OmniFi is adding considerable value through saving time and valuable treasury resource, and also by improving the reliability and accuracy of repetitive data processing,” he says.

Valmidiano sees many more areas where OmniFi can help to bring efficiencies and, based on the learnings from the first projects, he says that the treasury team will be able to configure OmniFi to automate many new tasks and processes themselves.

Recently, TFS took a license for the OmniFi scheduler and interface builder. This means that the team will now be able to generate and deliver reports automatically, providing greater responsiveness to users. And the interface builder will make it possible to specify and develop interfaces more easily, without any coding.