The Client

First Data Corp., formerly known as PROCESA, is a financial services leader in Latin America offering services such as payment processing, credit, debit, prepaid, gift and corporate card processing, and others. The Company was born in 2003 when First Data Corporation, a US Company and a local partner decided to create Processing Center S.A. (PROCESA) and establish its regional operations in Panama to service Banks and other customers in Latin America and the Caribbean. Recently, the parent company decided to change the name of its Panama operation to First Data Corporation.

The Challenge

First Data Corp. needed to take control of its accounting administration, which was handled by the local partner under an outsourcing model. Even though this model was initially beneficial to First Data Corp. from a cost perspective it was becoming more and more complicated for them to obtain information and reports on time for better decision making. The operation was growing rapidly and they needed to control their information and could not afford to depend on a third party for these matters. Thus, First Data Corp. decided to start searching for an ERP solution that could help them manage and control their own operations. They evaluated several ERP solutions from local to regional to world class, and this is where they got in contact with Solusoft in order to understand what solutions where available out there in the market. After several months of evaluations, the Client’s project team decided to go with the NetSuite ERP, one of the solutions proposed by Solusoft.

The Solution

Solusoft’s answer to the client’s needs was to offer two solutions for them to evaluate. One solution consisted of the Oracle E-Business Suite ERP and the other solution consisted of the NetSuite ERP package. First Data Corp. evaluated both solutions and decided to go with NetSuite because of its Software as a Service (SaaS) model and the added benefits such as its web based delivery, its real time integration, and its subscription based licensing model. First Data Corp. decided very quickly to go with the NetSuite alternative mainly because they were very familiar with the benefits of the SaaS and outsourcing model since they offer outsourcing of processing services to Banks in the region. It was natural for them to embrace this model, but something that ultimately tipped the scale towards NetSuite was the fact that NetSuite offered a turnkey solution able to go live from initial configuration to end user training in a period of only two (2) months. This “time to market” was impossible to achieve with almost any other ERP solution.

The Results

With the implementation of NetSuite First Data Corp. managed to get a tighter control on their financial accounting operations, but most importantly they managed to drastically reduce time and effort involved in the monthly billing process to customers. Today, according to CFO Orlando Macías, “the company has managed to obtain savings of 100% in time and effort dedicated to the process of billing customers on a monthly basis.”