BEIRUT: Lebanese enterprises are seeing increased interest in electronic banking to integrate and automate their business processes, Standard Chartered Bank, Solution Delivery global head Samir Habet told The Daily Star Monday.

“Lebanon will get on a par with other countries. In electronic banking, it initially starts slowly until people hear of some success stories that they can relate to and then suddenly everybody realizes the value of doing it,” Habet said in an interview.

Standard Chartered clients in Lebanon include multinational firms, international organizations and a number of Lebanese non-governmental organizations and corporations, according to Habet.

Habet added that medium-sized enterprises seeking to expand their business outside Lebanon find a particular interest in automating and integrating their business processes.

For example, a Lebanese business expanding its operations to open branches in Jordan could open an account with Standard Chartered in Amman and immediately start its operations on the same system that includes its bank accounts in Lebanon, Habet explained.

A recently implemented solution to clients in Lebanon of Standard Chartered’s Straight to Bank (S2B) Service Delivery platform is the bulk import function. The function allows the client to upload on S2B a pre-agreed file format such as an excel sheet.

The sheet, which the client generates on its own system and contains the salary of more than 300 payments, allows the authorization of payments in one click (as one batch) instead of entering each employee’s details and signing it.

However, the growing but still shy interest in electronic banking in Lebanon is attributed, according to Habet, to concerns among business owners who fear losing control over the entirety of operations if the process is automated.

“People have a tendency to sign checks ... to see every invoice ... This is psychological,” Habet said.

However, this attitude is changing as businesses see the benefits of going electronic, knowing that they will retain control over transactions and operations, Habet added.

“We customize the services so that you can go electronic without losing control. For example, a boss can prevent that any payment be made unless he goes online and inputs his pin code to approve it,” Habet said.

“People are suspicious and reluctant at first but once they see the benefits, once they see that reconciliation [between accounts] could be done in 15 minutes rather than five days, they see the value of going electronic,” he added.

Operating in near 54 countries with the same state of the art system across the globe and the same processing cycles in each country, Standard Chartered offers its clients top notch security and tailored solutions, Habet said.

“We aren’t a third party offering a service but rather a partner with our client,” Habet said.

“While banks used to sell clients pre-packaged products in the past, Standard Chartered Banks becomes part of the business process ... We do the necessary to integrate with the client’s business process,” Habet said.

Habet said the implementation phase of integrated business processes focuses on client requirements, capturing them in a business requirements document, which specifies exactly what the bank is going to deliver and how.

To further facilitate the implementation phase, the client would deal with only one project manager from Standard Chartered, Habet said

“Our approach is to find solutions for the client needs rather than selling a banking product. This is what makes our proposition powerful.”

Habet said it usually doesn’t cost the client more to obtain a tailored solution than a pre-packaged product.

“If the product is very specific to the client, we ask him to contribute to the cost but this rarely happens with very specialized clients,” he said.

Habet said the technology advancement over the past five to 10 years has changed how companies do banking.

“Old days included checkbooks, paper statements ... but with the internet and technology advancement, the same process takes place electronically,” Habet said.

Habet said the benefits of automating and integrating business processes lie in the elimination of repetitive work.