Brussels-based La Generale de Banque SA expects to save at least 50% on its yearly administrative costs once all of its telephone bills have been incorporated into the Electronic Data Interchange system it has been developing with state telecommunications operator Belgacom, says Thierry Gilmont, process manager at the bank. I say 50%, but in fact I expect more [savings], he said, but would not speculate on the exact amount he would save in processing the bank’s total 30,000 phone bills. In operating partially without paper, the bank is the first of a pilot group of 10 Belgacom clients, which have been experimenting with the phone company’s as-yet-unannounced Electronic Data Interchange service for the last 18 months.
Paper
Belgacom expects to announce the service, Electronic Interchange With Standard Edifact, officially, in about a month, says Belgacom’s information services director Alphonse Raes. He says that approximately 50 Belgacom customers, including the nine other experimenters, are interested in moving to electronic billing this year. The bank began eliminating the paper back-up system in January, after the passage of a new law in December authorising the progressive disappearance of official paper documents – in other words, the use of electronic billing systems. The bank still receives only 1% of its total telephone billing, or for 500 of its 6,000 lines, via the system, Gilmont says. He adds, however, that the system should comprise 30% of its billing within the next two months. To integrate the information for each line, we have to take the time to make sure we have all of the elements necessary to verify the bills electronically, Gilmont said. Customers signing up for the Electronic Interchange With Standard Edifact, EIWSE, service will receive their electronic phone billing into either the electronic mailbox or, if they have X400 service, directly into their computers, Raes said. Gilmont says the bank decided not to use its X400 network for Electronic Data Interchange to avoid mixing the pilot project with the bank’s operational, administrative applications.
By Marsha Johnston
The bank has no plans to put the EDI application back onto the X400 network, because it uses a program developed by Brussels-based systems integrator Acse SA, which collects the information from the X25 mailbox, stores it on magnetic disk, checks it for the Binary Condensed Algorithm code number, and checks it against internal and external data. The Binary Condensed Algorithm number, which is used throughout the financial world, is also received by facsimile from Belgacom, Gilmont said. The code, he says, assures us that, at the moment we read the bill, it has not been modified since the issuer sent it. The initial check, Gilmont says, is designed to determine if the bill is coherent; if in fact, it belongs to the bank, and if it shows an amount that corresponds to what the bank expected to be billed. The bank uses magnetic media to archive the disks today, but is studying whether to employ optical, since we know magnetic is not terribly reliable after four years, and we must conserve these for 10 years, Gilmont said. Acse’s program then adds information particular to the bank’s accounting procedures to the Edifact message, translates it into a format usable by the bank’s accounting system, and batch-loads it into that application. Edifact messages must be adopted to each company’s standards. It’s like when one guy speaks Chinese and the other French, they have to be translated in order to speak to each other, Gilmont said. The bank chose Acse because, while other companies told us they could provide us with an Electronic Data Interchange translator, Acse was the only one who said, ‘EDI is not a problem of technology, but a problem of integrating it into your existing systems,’ Gilmont said. Cost savings will come, he says, from three levels – logistical, administrative and payments. The first, corresponding to the just-in-time theory of inventory management, comes from the rapidity with which information is tra
nsmitted and, thus, acted upon. The second accrues from less time spent on billing. Gilmont said he did not expect the bank to lay off personnel as a result of increased EDI use; rather, they would be redeployed to more value-added jobs. Savings on bill payments are more minor than from the other two levels, but are a factor nonetheless, he said. The project began approximately two years ago when the Belgian Ministry of Finance seemed to know little about Electronic Data Interchange, Gilmont says. The dialogue between us began like this: ‘Of course, you can begin your [EDI] project, but just keep sending the bills on paper as well!’, he said. The eternal problem for the Ministry is discerning which is the original document and which is the copy.
Copies
We had to get through to the ministry that in informatics, you don’t have originals and copies, you just have the information issued at a certain time by the sender. Now they accept the idea, Gilmont said. The ministry’s acceptance of EDI technology was reflected in its support for the law passed in December. The goal at the bank, says Gilmont, is to use EDI for its other billing. We’re in the process of targeting the other areas where we can use it, he said, noting that others should be added sometime during this year. Before a billing procedure can be transformed into an electronic procedure, Gilmont stressed, every detail of the relation between the two parties must be perfectly understood. It’s even more important with EDI, because the spirit behind EDI is one of working together, he said.
