19th Aug 2014

What is Straight Through Processing?

How many of us can remember working in a pre-computer payroll office?

Endless rows of filing cabinets. Walls covered in handwritten charts that had to be constantly updated by some unlucky person.

Ashtrays on desks – anyone remember those?

No computers of course – instead, personnel and payroll information was stored slap bang in the middle of your desk (next to the ashtray) in ugly, imposing Kardex card cabinets like this one.

Then, on the first working day of each month the office was securely locked, a huge pile of cash was tipped out onto the floor and you would spend all day – and night – counting coins (and the occasional note), and filling pay packets for the staff.

What do you mean, you don’t remember pay packets?

Back to the future…

Computers came and changed everything, of course. They saved time, reduced errors, and freed us up to do more important things.

But of course, early computer technology wasn’t perfect either. Reporting, for example could involve having to learn a basic computing language and writing lengthy programs to get fairly basic information.

And guess what? Things still aren’t perfect. Treasurers up and down the country have staff manually rekeying the same information into their banking portals. And they do this week in, week out. Staff are still wasting time and effort – and still making errors.

But we now have the power to make inefficient working practices like this thing of the past. The answer? Straight Through Processing…

Straight Through Processing – a modern solution

Imagine! No processing delays. No human error. No manual rekeying. No paper forms…

Straight Through Processing is a key technological advancement that can help businesses reduce complexity and increase staff efficiency…

Manual transaction processing and rekeying is time consuming, prone to errors and susceptible to fraud. Straight Through Processing, on the other hand, automates the entire process from start to finish, eliminates redundancies and mitigates the risk of human error.

With Straight Through Processing, information only needs to be entered manually once, which means no more rekeying ever again!

Straight Through Processing allows treasurers and their staff to become proactive; freeing up their time to focus on strategic analysis and long term planning.

Key benefits of Straight Through Processing

By automating your payment transactions, Straight Through Processing can give your business immediate competitive advantages:

  • Less risk of fraud
  • Reduced error rates.
  • Greater staff efficiency and productivity.
  • Quicker transaction processing times.
  • Improved data availability, reliability and accuracy.

Over to you…

  • What are your thoughts on Straight Through Processing?
  • Are you intending on implementing it in the near future?
  • If you use it already, how much of a difference has it made?

Another great article – The AccessPay Guide to SUNs