AFTAs 2019: Best Back-Office Initiative—SmartStream Technologies

SmartStream maintains its impressive run of form across WatersTechnology’s various awards programs by winning the AFTA for the best back-office initiative, following up wins in the best reconciliation platform category and the best back-office platform category at this year’s BST and SST Awards, respectively. The bulk of the London-based firm’s success is down to its TLM Reconciliations Premium offering, which has just had its third major release, providing users with what SmartStream describes as “a flexible self-service user experience,” trend analysis for match-rate optimization and exception reduction, and model choices for each reconciliation. 

Robin Hasson, product manager for TLM Reconciliations Premium, explains that over the last 12 months, the firm has enhanced its ability to deliver its services through cloud deployments and has recently moved to support Docker technology. A range of artificial intelligence (AI) features were also unveiled during 2019, with additional AI rollouts planned for the coming months. “A major theme for the last 12 months has been on business enablement, allowing users without IT expertise to build reconciliations,” Hasson explains. “Using TLM SmartRecs, a user can define and validate the reconciliation they require without needing to engage IT until it is working as required. And if the business needs a one-off reconciliation, they can build it without IT being involved at all.” 

Looking ahead, SmartStream will continue to focus on improving performance, reducing deployment times and minimizing time-to-market, while simultaneously incorporating “high-value” AI and machine learning features. “We are increasing our integration points into TLM Reconciliations Premium by way of publishing APIs so that it is simpler and quicker to integrate with other systems, allowing them to manage and extract data, whether it is for user and account management or access to operational data,” Hasson says. “We will also continue to invest in new business modules such as Digital Payments Control to deliver the controls and oversight our clients need.”