We are working on a series of white papers on best practices for Treasury Management, here is an excerpt form one that talks about configurable approval workflows for one-off enterprise payments. The final white paper will be posted on our website, when ready. So here it is..
Configurable Payment Approvals
Bank Independent systems allow organizations to replicate their electronic payment approval process instead of following the ones prescribed by bank proprietary payment solutions. Customers can setup simple 2-step payment origination and approval or choose multi-step approval processes and avail rules based selection of the workflow depending on multiple parameters such as the transaction type, subsidiary making the payment or account.
An indirect benefit of the use of a configurable workflow engine is to enable both centralized and decentralized approvals simultaneously. Transitioning from centralized payment approvals to a decentralized approach can be easy and systematic, organizations can setup 2 workflows – one for centralized and one for decentralized model. To start off you can associate all subsidiaries to make payments via the centralized model replicating your current scenario. Then as your subsidiaries are ready to move to the decentralized model, you can switch those subsidiaries to follow the decentralized workflow.
Finally, you can implement your processes such that they enhance fraud prevention. For example, organizations can set the workflows and rules such that administrators who have most privileges in the system cannot participate in payments or require two administrators to work together to create or change an account or include multiple levels of approval for payments over a certain amount.