Manual and delayed processes. These were just some of the problems initially facing the Asia Pacific (APAC) treasury department of multinational chemical producer BASF. In particular, the company was looking for an efficient way to communicate to its bank regarding authorized signatures for payment approval.

Typically, when there is a change of authorized personnel at BASF, the APAC treasury team would send out physical documents to both the bank and the signer for confirmation on the new arrangement. This process would often be burdensome and take several weeks to complete. Looking to address this pain point, BASF worked closely with Deutsche Bank to implement a new solution, which would allow the company to send documents digitally to the bank.

Leveraging on DocuSign’s platform, the parties were able to bring the whole authorized signatures process online. Rather than sending documents physically to the bank, BASF can now send their digital signatures via DocuSign to Deutsche Bank’s system for approval and updating. From two to three weeks, requests for signature authorization changes can now be done within two days.

“Being a regional treasury, we often execute agreements with our banking providers that impact a number of our entities across the region. Having a digital signing process that is available in all markets where we operate makes banking with Deutsche Bank easy and efficient,” shares Jimmy Lui, regional treasurer for BASF, Asia Pacific.

In addition, to speeding up the whole approval process there is also reduced need of physical paper and no possibility of documents being lost during transit.

BASF wins the Best Payments and Collections Solution, Hong Kong within the digital solutions section of The Asset Triple A Treasury, Trade, Sustainable Supply Chain and Risk Management Awards 2020. To see the full list of digital solution winners please click here.

For more information about the awards please click here.