Background

The Goethe-Institut, which is active worldwide, is the cultural institution of the Federal Republic of Germany. Its international orientation presents the institution with a great challenge in the area of finance: a heterogeneous banking landscape and different and highly fluctuating liquidity situations in the individual countries require liquidity and information management to be optimised.

The requirement

Alongside Commerzbank accounts, accounts from third-party banks also had to be included in a worldwide cash pooling system. Further, a worldwide information management system had to be established and the existing electronic banking software EBsec had to be integrated. The intention was to provide cash pooling transactions and account information in the SAP systems for further automatic processing.

The solution

In a first step it was possible to establish a worldwide data management system with the support of Commerzbank. For this purpose the existing electronic banking system EBsec of approx. 360 applications was included. So the SAP system can further process the electronic account information automatically – the accounting became leaner and more effective.

Thus the foundations for the next milestones were laid: depending on the company and account, either pure zero balancing or target balancing were set up. And so today, a total of 140 accounts – including from third-party banks – in 98 countries have been included in the cash pooling system.