France's largest electricity network operator was created on January 1, 2008, following the opening of the electricity markets. It manages and operates 95% of the public electricity distribution networks in mainland France. The company makes every effort to ensure that all network users (customers, suppliers, and producers) have access to the network under strict conditions of non-discrimination, objectivity, and transparency. Employing approximately 38,000 people, this company operates, develops, and maintains 1,400,000 km of electricity networks on behalf of local authorities, who own the networks, serving 36 million customers.
Elena Corini, Head of the Treasury and Financial Risks Department at N&10, shares the reasons behind the change of TMS and the choice of NEOFI.
When the obsolescence of the previous TMS became apparent, the treasury team launched a feasibility study aimed at:
The tender dossier we launched covered all the classic needs of a treasury department and emphasized invoice and transfer reconciliation capabilities.
Of all the applicants, NEOFI was the vendor that best understood our needs. During the presentation, each vendor had four hours to present a proof of concept (POC) based on a pre-supplied data sample. NEOFI only needed two hours to detail how its offering met our needs and explain its configuration.
NEOFI software boasts an agility that its competitors have failed to demonstrate: it can offer standard solutions while adapting to client needs much more easily and quickly than its competitors. It even allows for the configuration of processes that we hadn't considered in our initial requirements.
In our business, the 300,000 transfers received each year are often partial payments, and invoice references are not always specified. Thanks to its scalable user interface, NEOFI has drastically increased the efficiency of our 40 national accounting operators in identifying received transfers in bank statements and transaction notifications and matching them with invoices issued by 5 different applications. The matching rules configured in NEOFI have allowed us to increase the overall automatic matching rate from 40% to 60%. And we are still working to improve it!
Because NEOFI eliminated many manual tasks, accountants and client managers were able to focus on higher value-added activities, such as debt collection. This improved not only performance but also the quality of accounting and, above all, customer satisfaction.
In the treasury department, NEOFI has halved the time required to prepare forecasts, improved their reliability and quality, and automatically linked short-term and long-term forecasts using sophisticated breakdown models. The automation of these processes allows us to focus on variance analysis.
Furthermore, with NEOFI, we have automated the generation of payments related to financing deadlines (interest and amortization), thereby strengthening the security and reliability of operations.
Soon, AI-initiated matchmaking suggestions will be included in NEOFI.
For monitoring bank charges, the tool will also offer better tracking thanks to inter-comparison between institutions, allowing for finer and more transparent management of banking relationships.
Finally, the activation of advanced modules, particularly for reporting, will be a key step in order to fully leverage the tool's potential and strengthen its strategic dimension.
