Digital leasing. Are you ready for SDS integration?

What is the SDS exactly?

The SDS, or the Structured Document System, is a joint initiative of KIR and the Polish Leasing Association and represents a new standard of digital communication in leasing processes.

The SDS was designed to streamline the exchange of information and documents between leasing companies and vehicle dealers. Its main purpose is to streamline and automate the purchasing of a vehicle or other lease item, so as speed up its eventual delivery to the end customer.

What are the benefits of the SDS?

The SDS is a new standard of digital communication between leasing companies and dealers. Thanks to the SDS, the Polish leasing industry can now enjoy simpler and more uniform methods. The changes are primarily aimed at facilitating integration with new suppliers and enabling a faster expansion of the lease portfolio. Of course, a wider customer portfolio is also an opportunity for better financial results.

The SDS is a revolutionary enterprise that provides leasing companies and dealers with a tool for effective digital communication and transactions. It is an opportunity to boost their competitive edge, improve customer service and ensure the dynamic growth of the Polish leasing industry.

SDS deployment: what are the difficulties?

SDS deployment is a comprehensive process that comes with many challenges. Every financing company has its own internal systems, procedures and restrictions, which are unique to its business activities. A long presence on the market means many complicated integrations and an elaborate and advanced IT architecture.

Deploying a new standard will then always require business-level changes and modernisations. And each such change will also imply system-level changes that require time and money.

And even though standards in the market are the same for everyone, each leasing company has its own tried and tested methods and procedures.

Of course, all their activities are aimed at the same goal: delivering the lease item to the lessee or user. Thus it follows that SDS deployment is a demanding process fraught with difficulties. It requires an individual approach, domain knowledge, technical know-how and an awareness of differences between companies.

A revolution in lessors’ architecture

Introducing the SDS standard in the leasing industry signifies a small architectural revolution for lessors: the solution requires necessary changes and integrations in existing back office systems. This involves, e.g., changes in internal processes, workflows and the data structure to ensure compliance with the standard. Because even though the SDS opens up new avenues for communication and process automation, lessors must understand its architecture well and adapt their systems to its requirements before it can be successfully implemented.

The standard was released as an SDS broker with an API for system integration. Properly deployed, it is meant to run in the background, integrated with the domain-specific systems of leasing companies and dealers.

Its functions should be embedded into applications that leasing companies and dealers use daily anyway, so that employees don’t need to learn to work with a completely new system and can benefit from new possibilities when using the solutions they already know well.

Of course, any system integration will involve certain pitfalls and difficulties. You need to remember aspects such as: data compliance and standardisation, differences in system architecture complexity, data security, changes in business processes, IT environment performance and scalability and the tests you will need to run to avoid problems after deployment.

If the company is not able to perform the integration on its own, it is worth enlisting the help of a professional consultant and order an architecture audit.

Integration with SDS

Many leasing companies face the challenge of integrating the SDS project with their current back-office system processes. As we mentioned before, the main goal is to simplify the process in place and to make the SDS – as the new communication standard – largely “invisible” (while facilitating and supporting the daily tasks of leasing companies and dealers). 

Based on many years of experience in the leasing industry, Altkom Software offers assistance that encompasses consulting services, architecture audits and SDS deployment support.

Our qualified consultants, who boast impressive experience in process modelling, strategy planning and audits, will take you through all the steps of the process. We will be happy to take the load off leasing companies and help them verify, update and perform integration with the new communication standard without having to absorb a lot of internal resources. 

Industry experience

We are well aware of the problems and challenges the leasing industry is facing in 2023/2024. One such problem is posed by the reforms associated with the introduction of the new WIRON index, and another is the long-anticipated KSeF (National e-Invoicing System). At the same time, as announced at this year’s eLeasing Day (held under the auspices of the Polish Leasing Association), the SDS is ready for integration with leasing companies. 

Process modelling

Altkom Software also has specialists with many years of experience in modelling and building processes using the Camunda platform. Camunda is an ideal solution for integrations of this kind and modelling new processes.

Need assistance? 

If you run a leasing company and want to tap the full potential of SDS, we are here to help you.  Contact us and fall back on our technical and industry experience to eliminate unnecessary red tape, shorten the leasing process and acquire new clients.