Tempus, based in Washington, D.C., is a full service provider of foreign exchange and international payment services to corporate clients. The company has improved operational efficiency by integrating Xignite's currency web service into its proprietary order management system to ensure currency data accuracy. As Tempus opens new offices in the United States and Europe, it needed to address the scalability issue of processing high volume of foreign exchange transactions with accurate exchange rates.
Challenge
When Tempus process clients' foreign currency orders, its sales staff first obtain rate quotes from Tempus traders using Bloomberg, then enter the currency rates into the internal transaction system. With any data entry process, inadvertent "keying" errors occurred which were caught and corrected by back-office staff during order fulfillment. Processing currency transactions with incorrect rates posted an obstacle to Tempus' future growth. Operational staff spent time tracing and fixing errors, time that could have been spent on more value-added tasks.
Solution
To eliminate currency data entry errors, Tempus deployed XigniteCurrencies in its order management system to allow its traders to cross-check, in real-time, the rates that sales force entered. The internal transaction system uses a SOAP interface to get real-time currency rates from Xignite.
Benefits
For Tempus, the results from implementing XigniteCurrencies are higher operational efficiency and cost savings. Since XigniteCurrencies is delivered as a web service, it saves Tempus significant development time and effort during integration. The pre-formatted currency data can be easily deployed to automate the verification of currency rates in the order management process. In addition, Xignite's web service pricing is based on actual data usage, making the currency web service affordable for a mid-sized business such as Tempus.
Overall, XigniteCurrencies provides Tempus with an integrated and affordable solution to ensure accuracy and integrity of currency rates in processing foreign exchange transactions, allowing Tempus to realize productivity gains in real terms to support future business growth in both the U.S. and Europe.