Intelligent Data Matching project
The goal: significant reduction of manual interventions
In 2017, Iren’s Credit Management department began a complex project to improve and automate processes of Energy, Gas, Water and Waste businesses collection reconciliations, which progressively involved 9 group companies located in the national territory. The goal was gradual reduction of manual activities managed in outsourcing by an external operator.
The complexity of Cash collection process in Iren is determined by the presence of several companies located in different geographical areas, different management systems and broad diversity of payment channels and methods through which the collections are carried out.
Managed Collection types
In addition to bank transfer collections – which currently provide connection with 20 banks and 100 accounts – Iren group companies collection reconciliation process includes also:
# Postal payment slips,
# Online payments such as Sisal, Poste, Lottomatica, credit cards, PagoPA;
# IrenPay, a new payment service available thanks to Open Banking introduced by PSD2,
# payments collected offline form bank counters and POS files.
Cash Collection: managed volumes
Utility sector companies, share a common business model but then again are very different in terms of organization, customer composition and billing systems that are diverse. This is the environment where Piteco IDM – Intelligent Data Matching – solution fully unfolds its potential, establishing a connecting element, acting as a concentrator and optimizer of collection processes, managing all types of collection, including the new online collection methods.
#Customers list in IDM: over 6 million,
# Unmatched registry items: about 5 million,
# Bank Transactions: 65,000/month,
# Massive collections online: 350,000/month,
# Collections acquired from files: 125,000/month,
# Collections from postal payment slips: 15,000/month,
# Daily matching in IDM: 16,000 automatic, 1,500 manual
Piteco IDM matches automatically 80% of credit transfers collections.
“Eager to offer a better service to our customers in July 2017 we decided to create a payment hub that could reduce time and automate the authentication, thus allowing a quick and safe validation of payments, even online!”
Luca Ottolini, Credit Director Iren Mercato SpA
Data Matching: collection and matching types
Piteco IDM hub manages reconciliation process of collection data from different Iren Group companies, through sophisticated activities of semantic data analysis, data normalization and validation based on continuous improvement of self-learning logics and further application of various reconciliation strategies. Implementation of machine learning algorithms and seamless process of data recognition and rules reconciliation refining, boost the following matches in IDM:
# wire transfers with identification of ordering customer and paid invoices,
# codeline for postal payment slips,
# single and multiple invoices,
# customer invoices referring to different contracts,
# on balance, in advance and overdue invoices.
In presence of complex and heterogeneous data, IDM supports Iren in the process of Cash Collection matching:
# for the same amount and for amounts rounded within predefined thresholds,
# in-advance collections,
# account transfers in case of Intercompany collections,
# balancing of PSD2 and PagoPa collections.