First Metro adopts Oracle-enabled Financial Accounting Management System

June 3, 2014 (Makati, Philippines)

After winning the Asset Benchmark Research 2013 Best Primary Bank for Corporate Bonds Investors’ Vote Philippines and topping the 2013 Bloomberg Debt League Table, First Metro Investment Corporation, the investment banking arm of the Metrobank Group, gears up for more laurels as it undergirds its financial accounting management system (FAMS).

First Metro’s financial, procurement, and inventory structures will be beefed up by two IT experts: Oracle, the most comprehensive suite of integrated, global business applications, will provide the software and NTT DATA Philippines, Inc., one of the trusted Philippine IT companies offering end-to-end deployment to enablement solutions for Oracle platforms, will implement the system.

By adopting the Oracle e-Business Suite, First Metro can efficiently consolidate its financial system, specifically on having centralized, automated, and fully integrated financial processes; streamlining its internal and external financial reporting; tracking its cash management and cash inflows and outflows; aligning its procedures and controls to make sound prediction on its financials and operation scheduling; and having better control over inventories and suppliers services.

First Metro president Roberto Juanchito Dispo said, “This FAMS project is very much aligned with the current thrust of our company -- that is to make our front-end to back-end operations efficient, for us to ensure and maintain dominance in the capital markets.” As of end-2013, First Metro captured Php 219.5 billion or 94 percent out of the total Php 233.5 billion bonds in the capital markets.

According to Reyes the Oracle e-Business Suite for financials and accounting project is seen to update the company with the current trends of the industry, making it proactive with the future of financials. The Oracle e-Business Suite will enable administrators and end-users to maximize the interfaces for reduced accounting processes. It will also relieve them the burden of manual data entries, making online processing of each task possible and the accounting processes faster.

NTT DATA Philippines proposed to implement Oracle e-Business Suite R12 as the main financial system that shall automate the business process of First Metro and consolidate the financial result with their subsidiaries, thereby achieving the following objectives:

• (1) Deliver information in a timely manner to support management in their decision-making

• (2) Implement an integrated financial system that provides access to all appropriate users of enterprise information

• (3) Standardize internal reports that deliver relevant information to the end-users

• (4) Implement a system that is flexible and that can be upgraded as necessary

• (5) Improve efficiency through the automation of manual processes

• (6) Reduce the time element of business cycles

• (7) Achieve a high ROI (Return on Investment)

• (8) Minimize cost, risk and complexity.

NTT DATA Philippines will also automate the creation of the required regulatory reports for the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, Securities and Exchange Commission, and Bureau of Internal Revenue by implementing integration points to FAMS and having a data repository that will serve as the data source for the said reports. Through this, First Metro will have better controls in optimizing and creating its internal and external account proceedings for publication to management, and most importantly to its regulatory agencies with high consideration to the standards and timetable set.