SSSB

We’ve been partnering with Stockholm Studentbostäder, SSSB, for a few years now. With the help of the digitalization of several of their work processes, we’ve improved the efficiency of several aspects of their financial work.

We spoke to Jan Karlsson, CFO at SSSB, to learn more about how they use our Treasury Management System and how it has helped them. For example, how it gives them a better overview of their debt portfolio, ensures the accounting corresponds with the bank’s loan notifications and that they always have access to the latest market data.

A few quick facts about Stockholms Studentbostäder

SSSB was founded in 1958 and is the biggest real estate company specializing in student housing in Sweden. The company builds, manages, and acts as an agent for student housing in the Stockholm area.

So tell us, how did you start working with Nordkap? What were your processes like in the past?

We used to use a hybrid solution based on an older system combined with Excel. That solution quickly became key-person dependent, which resulted in that we didn’t have the amount of control we wanted. It also lacked a connection between our debt portfolio and its reporting, which meant we had to do lots of time-consuming manual work. So we wanted a solution that could help us with those parts and grow with us long-term. And Nordkap’s cloud-based Treasury Management System gives us all those things.

How has Nordkap improved your work processes? Is there a specific area that you feel the partnership has been especially valuable for?

First and foremost, Nordkap has helped us improve the collaboration between the finance and accounting functions, and our work processes are no longer dependent on a key person in the organization. We also use Nordkap’s accounting export, which has improved the efficiency of our work regarding loans and interest rate notifications. And we also save a lot of time, especially when it comes to our reconciliation work. And of course, digitalization has also strengthened our internal control; we have a more secure basis now, and the system helps us discover irregularities quicker.

Another significant benefit is that the availability has increased a lot. No, everyone who needs to, including our management team, can quickly access updated, high-quality market data. That means that we, in the long run, will be able to create better prognoses and take better, more well-founded decisions. And of course, it’s also a great help that the system makes all the work processes uniform and allows us to invite external parties into our processes, such as our financial consultant, so that we can work together in the same system and with the same source of data.

You mentioned earlier that you wanted a system that could grow with you. Do you feel like Nordkap has done that?

Absolutely! Nordkap is modularly built, which has allowed us to evolve our usage of the system at our own pace. It’s been essential that we can take things one step at a time. For example, we’ve recently imported all of our mortgage deeds into the system, and the next step will be connecting them to their respective credits. We’d also like to get started with our prognosis work at a larger scale and, for example, use the system for interest rate simulations and get long-term prognoses for our budget work.

For us, another great benefit has been that the system is as user-friendly and expandable as it is. And as a bonus, the close collaboration with Nordkap has provided us with an extra sense of safety.