Citibank I nterface Links R/3 To Electronic Banking

Product signals business interest in online financials

By Jeff Sweat with Tom Stein

itibank last week introduced an SAP banking interface that will let customers link their R/3 account-reporting systems directly to the bank's electronic banking system, known as Citibanking.

The interface, the result of a collaboration with SAP in the enterprise application vendor's Complementary Software Program, will provide links to accounts payable and receivable and statement-reporting processes. It uses TSI International Software's Mercator for R/3 middleware to translate financial information from SAP to a Citibanking format.

While interfac es to the SAP supply chain have dealt primarily with physical goods, Citibank's interface is indicative of a wider effort from businesses to link to the financial side as well. "As businesses move to enterprise applications, I'm sure that the corporate market will be demanding standards for [this kind of] interaction from their banks," says Ann Cairns, Citibank VP of global capabilities.

Cairns says linkages between Citibanking and R/3 will give businesses more control over accounts payable and receivable processes, eliminate labor-intensive manual operations, and reduce processing time and rekeying errors. Multinational companies in particular can use the Citibanking interface to handle tasks such as currency exchange and to establish a common banking metaphor between partners.

"With an extended supply chain and business-to-business commerce, it makes sense for Citibank to offer this to its customers who use R/3," says Bruce Richardson, VP of research at Advanced Manufacturing Research, an IT consult ing firm in Boston.

According to Cairns, roughly 25% of Citibank corporate customers are moving to R/3. Citibank is looking at similar interfaces for other enterprise application vendors, she says, including Oracle, J.D. Edwards, and PeopleSoft. The R/3 interface will go live at the first customer site at the end of this month.

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