An effective risk management procedure starts with maintaining security over your private banking files. Lack of dependable protection over your information is a serious gap within your business’s fraud prevention process and drastically increases the risk of a security breach. According to a 2022 report from PWC, 46% of businesses reported experiencing fraud, corruption, or other economic crimes in the last 24 months. Your sensitive banking information is a prime target for a financial fraud incident. With this in mind, SK Global launched the BankFabric module in our Treasury Automation Suite for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain to safely transfer your banking files from your ERP to the bank.

Why BankFabric

Within standard D365 Finance and Supply Chain it is difficult to securely transfer your files to and from the bank. Without added automation your business must manually upload files to your desktop and then upload them to the bank’s web portal. Using this tedious manual procedure is not only inefficient but is also a huge security risk. Our Azure-hosted BankFabric solution addresses this gap in standard D365 through providing an easy-to-use interface to store and transmit your banking files.

Through secure and embedded technology BankFabric heightens security and streamlines your banking integration process within your D365 environment. Our solution provides maximum security over your information through storing your banking files and communication keys within your Azure subscription. Your private files are completely secure, SK Global has no right to access them unless you configure permissions. In addition, BankFabric protects all your banking connection parameters, meaning your URLs, login credentials, encryption keys etc.

On top of providing complete security over the storage of your banking files, BankFabric supports file transfers in any format to any bank(s) worldwide. Our BankFabric module is a robust addition to our Treasury Automation Suite. Regardless of the size of your organization, our suite of financial automation modules can scale and streamline your processes in any industry.

Setting Up Your BankFabric Account

With its advanced embedded technology, you would think BankFabric would require a complicated set up and configuration process. However, most of the set-up and configuration to wire BankFabric to your subscription is streamlined with many parts automated within Azure Cloud Shell. Below is a simple 5 step guide on the setup of your BankFabric account:

1. Create your BankFabric Environments

The first step to setting up BankFabric is creating the environments. In BankFabric, all environments are hosted in a single “account.” These single “accounts” represent a customer. Access can be granted to multiple users by the administrator through their email address, allowing them to view the dashboard of all accounts that the user has access to. The dashboard overview feature increases visibility and fosters collaboration across departments.

There are two types of users within our BankFabric solution, an account contact who is typically from the sales process and an account admin, who usually has a technical role. Your account admin will be responsible for adding and setting access for subsequent users. Access to the BankFabric portal is authenticated and authorized through a standard Microsoft AD login.

Once your account is set up, and an account admin is assigned. The admin can allow access to your employees or third-party vendors to assist you with infrastructure or administration. Access can be granted with permissions tailored to the role of each user. When you access your account, you can configure any of the D365 environments you want to automate.

BankFabric can be configured to be turned on module by module within an environment, permitting a hybrid solution during rollout. From there you can add other options module by module, switching BankFabric on as you bring each banking module online. Secure PINs are auto refreshed on a weekly basis to ensure the maximum security between BankFabric and each of your D365 environments.

2. Accessing File Locations

The second component of setting up BankFabric is configuring your file locations. File locations are easily configured within BankFabric and are automatically maintained for each environment. Within D365 these locations are used within the Bank Reconciliation, Vendor Payment Automation, and Customer Settlement and all modules within our Treasury Automation Suite.

To further streamline the setup file locations are replicated across all environments. This eliminates the need to repeat the setup process across environments. New environments will inherit file location names, while still being in different storage accounts. This prevents any files from cross pollinating across environments. To maximize security all documents stored in Azure are encrypted at their destination.

3. Setting File Names

After setting up your file locations you will want to set your file names.  outbound files are set up in each environment. File names can be set by module or category, and names configured based on pieces, such as prefix, file number, date, time, and extension. Once a file name is configured, it is affiliated with the file location. With this setup, configuration within D365 is significantly improved since only a file location needs to be specified.

4. Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP)

The fourth component in the BankFabric set up process is SFTP configuration. SFTP set up is where connections to each bank are configured. URLs, login credentials, keys are uploaded, and a test connection can be conducted to ensure the SFTP configuration has been set up correctly.

All files going from D365 to Azure and Azure to your bank(s) can be automatically encrypted. Designated environments for production can be marked as such to exclude them from test usage.

Different SFTP configurations can be set up for separate environments and for your bank(s) of choice. Communication can be assigned to all environments or designated ones as required. Once it is set up, files are pushed and pulled automatically and can be viewed within each environment or module.

5. Importing Bank Files

The last step for setting up BankFabric is importing your bank files. For heightened security, the bank files in Azure can be configured for view only without downloading. Authenticated users can upload, download, rename, or delete files. Permissions can be applied by user, environment, and module-category. This is very helpful to allow open access and easy collaboration during testing, while narrowing the security exposure for your production environment.

Processing files can be fully automated regardless of whether they are in or out of D365. With all of SK Global’s modules, automation features can be configured at various levels to best suit your business needs. For instance, with vendor payments a workflow completion step can automatically create the appropriate bank-formatted file, transmit it to BankFabric where BankFabric will store the file and transmit it to the bank. With inbound processing enabled, once the bank reviews the file it will send back an acknowledgement or transaction level file. Again, it’s stored in BankFabric and automatically imported into the D365 payment journal, marking the lines either accepted or rejected and posts the journal. The flow starts once the ERP workflow process is complete and can be fully automated end-to-end. This is the hallmark of Banking and Treasury automation.

6. Secure APIs

As APIs are becoming more common for bank integrations, SK Global is working with banks to provide this newer connectivity option. With APIs there is no file created, but rather a direct connection and transmission of ERP to bank data (and vice versa). Our API solution is built right into BankFabric providing the same familiar interface for the setup and monitoring.

BankFabric with SK Global

Shifting to BankFabric can significantly improve your bank integration process, providing more control and securing access to sensitive company information. Reach out to SK Global today to learn more about how BankFabric can remove the need for third-party management tools through effortlessly consolidating files and processes, while streamlining access all within your D365 ERP. All future security and application enhancements to our Treasury Automation Suite will be “powered” by BankFabric.

For more information, contact SK Global today.