AFP ANNUAL CONFERENCE, LAS VEGAS - October 16, 2006— GXS, a leading provider of business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce solutions, today announced a managed services offering designed specifically for the unique needs of financial services institutions.  This specialized service enables financial institutions to become better integrated with their corporate clients and support a diverse range of e-commerce technologies.  GXS Managed Services also can increase the competitiveness of a financial institution’s cash management product portfolio by improving customer service quality and increasing business model flexibility.  Through the enhanced capabilities provided by GXS Managed Services, financial institutions are able to increase their new business win rates and to grow revenues with existing accounts.

GXS Managed Services leverages the GXS Trading Grid^® for secure, scalable, high-performance transaction exchange and implementation of electronic integration between financial institutions and their corporate clients.  Through GXS, financial services customers are able to communicate with corporate clients and facilitate funds transfer using clients’ preferred technology platforms and standards.  GXS Managed Services enables financial institutions to send and receive financial information and transactions such as automated clearinghouse (ACH), wire transfer, paper check, electronic bill payment or retail lockbox channels using nearly any networking communications protocol including FTP, AS2, HTTP/S or IBM WebSphere® MQ.  GXS also supports a wide range of industry data standards such as EDI, XML, VDA, SWIFT or BAI. 

GXS Managed Services provides three primary benefits to financial institutions:

• Flexibility – GXS can significantly expand the options a bank can offer its corporate clients for B2B integration. Through enhanced flexibility, the financial institution becomes easier-to-do-business with. Flexibility also improves the customer experience and boosts the competitiveness of the bank’s products.  In fact, major financial institutions using GXS Managed Services have reported improved new business win rates, as a result of a three-fold to six-fold increase in the number of security, communications and network options GXS provides for the companies’ clients.
• Straight-through-processing – The most customer-friendly option a bank can offer a corporate client is to integrate directly with their accounts payable, accounts receivable and treasury management systems.  Integrating directly with an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system unlocks the potential for higher value service offerings and eliminates preparation work for the bank’s client.  Payables files can be extracted from a corporate client’s ERP system, then forwarded to the bank for payment.  Similarly, receivables collected from lockbox, online bill pay, call centers, ACH, RTGS or international settlement can be aggregated into a single update file for input into the ERP system.
• Service quality metrics – GXS Managed Services can offer financial institutions substantial improvements to the customer experience, one of the key factors banks use to differentiate themselves from their competitors.  For some multi-national financial corporations, GXS has reduced implementation timeframes for new clients from three months using internal resources, to three weeks using GXS Managed Services, a four-fold improvement.  Cost of delivery can be reduced as well.  Through GXS’ efficiencies in mapping, communications and testing, implementation cost reductions of 20 to 40 percent are possible.  Quality of delivery is enhanced by reducing the number of customer issues and trouble tickets encountered during day-to-day operations.

“At Royal Bank of Canada, we are committed supporting our customers company-wide with our Client First Initiatives, no matter how complex the request or specialized support required.  We have developed a strong relationship with GXS because they have assisted us in delivering on this promise when it comes to supporting unique protocols and standards and to providing our customers with greater business banking efficiency in a secure manner,” said Brenton Trites, product manager (National Office) at RBC Royal Bank of Canada.  “In addition, GXS Managed Services minimizes the amount of internal resources required to be proficient in the myriad of B2B standards, but yet increases the flexibility of our business banking solutions, making us a better financial partner to our customers.”

GXS program managers coordinate all technical implementation functions including connectivity set-up, file transfer script development and end-to-end system testing.  As necessary, GXS can provide mapping services to convert data from corporate ERP systems into the appropriate formats for bank processing.  GXS mapping services enable straight-through-processing of payables and receivables transactions between a core banking application and a corporate client’s ERP system.  Following implementation, GXS partners with the financial institution to provide service delivery to the corporate client.  GXS will provide on-going management of technical configuration changes and platform upgrades.  Additionally, GXS can provide 24x7 technical support for corporate clients including troubleshooting, problem resolution and root cause analysis. 

“Today, an increasing number of financial institutions are expanding their use of B2B integration technologies to better serve business clients,” said Steve Keifer, vice president of industry and product marketing at GXS.  “GXS understands the unique challenges faced by financial institutions, and the need to get competitively-differentiated solutions to market quickly and efficiently.  Through GXS, financial institutions are well-positioned to become better integrated with their customers, can enhance their suite of treasury management services and respond more quickly to their clients’ evolving needs.” 

GXS has 100 percent of the Fortune 500 banking and savings institutions as customers, and more than 250 global financial services companies in United States, Brazil, Europe and Asia-Pacific.  BB&T, BMO Financial Group, RBC Royal Bank of Canada, IVANS and several large global money center banks all utilize GXS solutions to enhance service quality and standards functionality.  GXS has nearly 20 years experience and more than 100 clients using GXS Managed Services around the world.  As a key component of the GXS Trading Grid, GXS Managed Services allows customers to maintain internal control of their IT investments and existing infrastructure, while outsourcing the day-to-day management and monitoring of B2B e-commerce transactions.  Organizations that deploy GXS Managed Services are empowered to free up internal resources to focus on core business objectives, reduce costs and fill gaps in a customer’s internal expertise.

In a recent report from the TowerGroup entitled B2Bank Integration: A New Acronym for the Changing e-Commerce Landscape, Research Director Susan Feinberg states, “As clients' business needs generate demand for more interfaces to more applications, banks must find solutions that will enable them to be responsive and flexible. Highly valued corporate clients continue concentrating their transaction business with fewer banks. To survive this consolidation requires a bank to develop and execute a strategy for addressing the evolving integration needs of this market. Identifying the appropriate technology partners to contribute to a high-quality client experience will ensure the bank is still in the competition for the next piece of banking business that requires B2Bank integration.”

GXS is a leading global provider of B2B e-commerce solutions that simplify and enhance business process integration, synchronization and collaboration among trading partners.  Organizations worldwide, including 75 percent of the Fortune 500, leverage the GXS Trading Grid^® to extend supply networks, optimize product launches, automate warehouse receiving, manage electronic payments and gain supply chain visibility.  With an unmatched global presence, proven trading partner management and B2B outsourcing services, GXS’ on-demand solutions maximize the benefits of integration for businesses.  

Based in Gaithersburg, Md., GXS’ extensive global network serves customers throughout the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Africa and Asia Pacific regions.  GXS can be found on the Web at www.gxs.com.

1 Tower Group, “B2Bank Integration: A New Acronym for the Changing e-Commerce Landscape” by Research Director Susan Feinberg, October 2006