Waters Rankings 2021: Best reconciliation management provider—SmartStream

WHY THEY WON

The growing interest in managed services and cloud deployments is reflected by the rising number of engagements and revenue growth. SmartStream separated itself with voters thanks to its advancements using AI and its shift to the cloud.

WHAT’S NEW

SmartStream has invested heavily in AI through the years. For example, its Affinity module is used to observe a user’s actions and establishes its own understanding of how to record match. At its core, it acts as a virtual user to support businesses dealing with large amounts of manually matched data—the more it observes, the more accurate it becomes, thereby boosting matching rates. 

The company’s recent moves are aimed at bringing flexibility to reconciliations, while leveraging AI to make the process more efficient, from digital payments to intersystem reconciliations. Each solution can be deployed on the cloud, on-premise or via managed services. 

SmartStream’s Innovations Lab has been working with AI and machine learning modules to reduce manual touch points and improve data quality and insights. 

WHAT’S TO COME 

Right now the company is adding AI matching using Affinity Plus, its latest AI observational learning solution to meet the technical demands and business agility for operational data management and data quality processes. This provides more flexibility for specific user learning requests. 

SmartStream also has several planned enhancements for rapid onboarding of reconciliations, but the company is focusing on making sure it doesn’t compromise the accuracy of match results. This is designed to significantly widen the number of users able to configure reconciliations.  

Finally, the vendor will introduce modules to handle digital payments across all solutions, as tier-one banks require more comprehensive functionalities.