EXPERTISE
Learn More about our Strategies, our Skill Sets and our Systems
-
Borrowings & Trade Finance
-
Investments & Loans
-
Forex & Derivatives
-
Finance & Cash Management
Our expertise lies in developing smart and innovative solutions in any, or all, of four operational areas in TRM. Using a specially developed proprietary platform we deliver intuitive analytics, seamless business processes and advanced risk management thus transforming finance and treasury management for our customers.
OFFERINGS
Borrowings & Trade Finance
Components:
-
Bank Debt
-
Market Debt
-
LCs, International trade & Supply Chain finance
-
Others
Areas covered:
Bank Loans, Debentures & Bonds, CP, CC, Working Capital, Non-Fund Based LC/BG, Supply Chain Finance, Buyers Credit / Packing Credit (India) and Usance / UPAS LCs (international market), LC discounting and off-balance sheet finance
Deliverable Outcomes:
-
WA Interest Cost, Repayment Planning, FX Valuation
-
Limit Management, Ratings Management, RBI Compliance
-
BENPOS Integration / CP Documentation
-
Accounting Integration, Integration with Cash Flow Planning
-
Report Bank with 50+ Reports
-
Maturity tracking/roll-overs, Fee calculation, Covenant Management
Investments & Loans
Components:
-
Deposits
-
Mutual Funds
-
Bonds & Securities
-
Equity Pref Shares
Areas covered:
Fixed Deposits, Inter-corporate Deposits, Mutual Funds (Overnight / Liquid, Long-duration, Fixed Maturity), Corporate Bonds, Govt Securities, T-Bills, Non-Convertible Debentures (NCD), Zero Coupon Bonds, Commercial Paper, Market Repo (CROMS), TREPS (CBLO) Lending, Equity & Preference Shares
Deliverable Outcomes:
-
Security set-up, Deal creation and monitoring for various types of Investments and Securities – covering the entire Investment lifecycle
-
Daily/Monthly MTM Valuation – via integration with FS DataBridge
-
Analytical and Dashboard reports to monitor investment performance / ROI
-
Accounting Integration, Integration with Cash Flow Planning
-
Income-tax reporting on Capital Gains / parallel valuation
-
Report Bank with 50+ Reports
Forex & Derivatives
Components:
-
FX & Options trading, including enhancements for high-volume ops
-
Put-Call Options (with various strategies), NDOs, NDFs, Swaps etc
-
FX Loans / ECBs, FX Bonds, Interest Rate/ Cross-currency Swaps
-
Hedge Management & Accounting
Areas covered:
Various types of FX blotters, FO-MO-BO operations, all market instruments, all types of derivative & hedging instruments covering interest rate risk, currency risk, price risk etc
Deliverable Outcomes:
-
Entire deal lifecycle covering FX deals as well as vanilla and complex derivatives
-
Effective Monitoring, Risk Management, Limits and segregation of duties
-
Compliance with Hedge Management & Accounting standards
-
Valuation, MTM and straight-through accounting
-
Multiple reports to manage & hedge exposures, using market instruments
Finance &
Cash Management
Components:
-
Financial Accounting & Controlling (FICO)
-
Regulatory & MIS Reporting
-
Cash Flow Planning, Forecasting & Reporting
-
Bank Connectivity, Host-to-Host Integration etc
Areas covered:
-
Financial accounting & reporting, tax compliance, Regulatory & MIS Reporting, Liquidity Planning, Cash Flow forecasting and monitoring, integration with Banking partners
Deliverable Outcomes:
-
Baseline FICO system in SAP with all standard accounting & reporting functionality
-
Indirect Tax (VAT/GST) and Direct tax (WHT, TDS) compliance
-
MIS Reporting covering Cost & Profitability planning and reporting
-
Effective management of cash flows for Short term (1-7 days), Medium term (7-90 days) and Long term (90-365 days) Cash Planning & Forecasting
-
Liquidity management solutions integrated with Treasury Investments (for surpluses) and Borrowings (for CC/WCDL draw-downs)
-
Enterprise-wide cash visibility with Bank Balance reports across banks, locations or enterprises
-
Improved operational efficiency including Host2Host, Payment Batching and Signatory Authorizations
-
IMPLEMENTATION
-
SUPPORT
Our approach and methodology built upon ‘platform based solutions’ ensures that the most important business processes, solutions, and services are first set-up on a flexible, robust, and scalable basis, to allow our customers to quickly reap benefits from deployment of our solutions.
This platform can then be enhanced and new add-ons and solutions deployed over time as per changes in market / regulatory requirements, or as per requirements of our customers.
Engagements are largely driven by ‘solution architects’ and ‘centres of excellence’, ably supported by a ‘COE Delivery Matrix’ that has put together some of the most complex and largest deployments of solutions and services, in the world of SAP Financials, Treasury and Risk Management.
​
Implementation and Support follows the SIGNAL ONE methodology.
APPROACH
Platform Based Approach
Add-on
Add-on
Add-on
Add-on
Add-on
Add-on
Add-on
Add-on
Borrowings
& Trade Finance
Investments & Loans
Forex &
Derivatives
Finance & Cash Management
Set-up base functionality-
prioritized requirements in
Phase 1; start using the platform
bite only what you can chew
Build & grow the platform
addressing new business
requirements & converting
expenditure into a valuable
asset over time
3
2
1
Set-up with a 3-5 year
horizon: build scalability
robustness, responsiveness
SIGNAL ONE
Fourth Signal executes projects through a time-bound and phase-wise deployment on a base platform with rich in-built functionalities, and frameworks for add-ons and enhancements, while incorporating all industry-focused standards, and best in-class business practices.
Phase 1: Design
-
Walk-through of solution for various business processes on the system
-
Identification of Delta customer-specific changes and enhancements
-
Elimination of paper-based discussions – see your solution on your Dev server
-
Business Blueprint finalisation & sign-off
​
Phase 2: Build
-
Finalise UAT Plan, Master Data & Market Data as per BBP
-
Technical development – customer specific reports & interfaces
-
Conduct UAT workshops - includes system training for core team and key users
-
UAT finalization & sign-off
​
Phase 3: Deploy
-
Move finalised solution to Production server
-
Plan and execute Data migration
-
Set up user Roles & Authorizations
-
Solution readiness check & Go Live
-
Post go-live Hyper-Care – user handholding and granular system surveillance
IMPLEMENTATION
Fourth Signal works in a spirit of collaboration with our customers, offering them long-term warranties and multi-year engagements, with unequivocal support in effective and efficient streamlining of business operations / management for Finance and Treasury.
​
Incident/Defect Management
-
SLA-driven issue resolution & turn-around times (TAT)
-
Troubleshooting / solving functionality issues
-
Root Cause Analysis and Improvements
-
Assistance in regulatory compliance and month/year closing
​
Change Requests - Minor
-
Configuration and minor enhancements
-
Master Data set up and reporting
-
Transparent categorization of changes (< 15 man-days)
​
Change Requests – Major
-
Changes / enhancements in existing application
-
Includes new features & functionality like new products, new reports etc to respond changes in market (external) & business (internal) dynamics
-
Transparent categorization of changes (> 15 man-days)
-
Transparent costing framework for executing changes enabling rapid deployment of new functionality
SUPPORT
CLOUD BASED APPLICATIONS
A market data aggregation & analytical platform fully integrated with SAP Treasury systems
Offers unidirectional data flow – from FS DataBridge to SAP
​
Features
-
Seamless access to external market data from within the SAP system
-
Wide range of data available, customized to user requirements
-
Basic analytics available in FS DataBridge, customer specific analytics available in our sister-platform FS Nxt
-
Current data sets include a wide range of India-specific data including FX Rates, Interest Rate Benchmarks, MCLR Rates, MF NAVs and underlying Portfolios
Outcomes
-
Flexible & robust reporting & MIS – marrying customer-specific SAP data with Market Data
-
Mutual Fund Analytics – manage risk by evaluating underlying portfolios of MF Debt Schemes (ISIN-wise, with Ratings)
-
MCLR Analytics - all bank rates at a glance, with comparatives for different tenors
-
Seamless MTM – daily (without accounting) and monthly (with accounting)
FS DATABRIDGE
Cloud Platform fully integrated with SAP Treasury systems, with powerful features & functionalities not available in the standard SAP system
Offers seamless 2-way data flow between SAP & FS NxT – and acts as an extension of your SAP Treasury solution
Features
-
Various customer-specific applications & extensions which are bolted-on to support& enhance core Treasury processes running on SAP
-
Added flexibility in overall solution, leveraging the power of the cloud
-
Reduced footprint of custom development in your SAP platform – several ready-to-use features available at no additional cost to Fourth Signal customers
Some of our existing Ready-to-use applications are as follows​
-
CC Bank Statement Converter - upload bank statements to directly create CC transaction on SAP
-
CP and NCD documentation – compliance-related forms and letters
-
MF Reporting - Portfolio Reporting and risk management
-
Planning & Forecasting – including projected cost of borrowings, ROI on investments etc customized with customer-specific data sets
-
Portfolio reporting with latest market data – create graphical charts n PDFs as per data given
-
Covenant Management – tracking & monitoring various Financial & non-financial covenants of bank borrowings