Since 2003, UniCredit Leasing (UCL) in the Czech Republic has used a tailor-made internet application developed by AMI Praha for operational (advance) car financing, connecting importers with car dealers and the company’s headquarters.

UCL prepays vehicles delivered by the importer to the dealer. The dealer can then sell the car for cash and return the money or enter into a leasing agreement with UCL. The latter option is incentivized by bonuses.

The application allows the importer to input invoice data for cars delivered to dealers, for UCL headquarters to check this data and to pay out money according to the findings. Dealers are allowed to track the progress of the entire process.

Multiple importers and multiple dealer networks are allowed to participate. The system is open and allows the involvement of different types of operational financing.

In 2014, UCL chose the Liferay portal technology as a uniform basis for communication with external entities (importers, dealers) and for covering some internal processes. At the same time, a change was made to the core leasing software, with the older ILEAS product being replaced by MS Dynamics Navision (NAV).

AMI Praha supplied the operational financing (PF) solution on the Liferay platform as a subcontractor for the main supplier of this technology, ARBES Technologies. At the same time, the task was to provide IT support for the unification of PF processes between the Czech and Slovak parts of UCL.

The project included a new implementation of the user interface for the operational finance application in the form of a so-called “portlet” for the Liferay portal, including the provision of a platform for online signing of PDF documents.

At the same time, the integration with the backend system was completely redesigned. All input operations are performed using the web-service interface of the NAV system and all data for display is retrieved from NAV using dedicated database views.

For interfacing with importer systems, the existing options have been retained, i.e., integration via web-services or by transferring data files.

The project also included an analysis of the tools used for PF in Slovakia and the design of the user interface of the new systems was based on the practices used in both countries. The business process in Slovakia was completely transferred to the application supplied by us.

Operational financing is completely operated in the Czech and Slovak Republics using a new application supplied by AMI Praha, which runs on the Liferay platform and is integrated with the backend MS Dynamics Navision. The solution was also presented to UniCredit branches in other European countries and its further extension is under discussion.