GE Capital Automates Distribution of Its Correspondence

"With the joint reporting system from Magic Software Enterprises and Software AG, we have access to a flexible solution that grows along with our requirements."

“We will benefit internationally from an expandable solution that for the first time brings together the advantages of IBM iSeries and Tamino XML Server.”

Hermann Schell, IT Manager, GE Capital 

Challenge

GE Capital is one of the largest factoring service providers in Germany. It purchases receivables from goods and services transactions and in return transfers up to 90% of the receivables directly to its customers. Every month the company sends out about 200,000 documents with 500,000 individual pages including bank statements, other types of statements and late notices.

The challenge was to implement a reporting system that completely automates the distribution of bank statements and other correspondence to customers. They wanted to achieve the maximum flexibility possible in terms of communication channels and document formats, while maintaining all the advantages of the proven IBM iSeries (AS/4000) system platform.

Solution

Software AG and Magic Software jointly developed an XML-based solution for document processing and multi-channel publishing. Magic Software contributed a reporting application that converts all the necessary data from IBM iSeries directly into XML and then transfers it as a SOAP query to the Java application developed by Software AG. Using Magic Software’s development environment, eDeveloper (today branded Magic xpa Application Platform), an application module was developed through which bank employees could individually define how often and through which communication channel they wanted to send bank statements and other types of statements. As soon as a document is in the production queue, Magic Software’s solution automatically extracts all the necessary information from the iSeries database. Finally the software transforms this data into an XML document, which it then transfers in the form of SOAP queries to one of the Java applications built by Software AG.

Value

The new reporting system provides independent production and fully automated distribution of some 200,000 documents per month, with processing times of 0.2 to 0.3 seconds per page.

The system includes 25 types of documents in 4 languages, and maintains flexible definitions of distribution methods and rhythms.

Hermann Schell, IT Manager at GE Capital sums up the benefits of the new system: “We will benefit internationally from an expandable solution that for the first time brings together the advantages of IBM iSeries and Tamino XML Server.”