The world’s largest treasury event is returning to Vienna in September | 10% discount via treasuryXL

09-05-2022 | Eurofinance | treasuryXL |

 

EuroFinance International Treasury Management, the world’s largest and most influential treasury event, will take place in Vienna from September 21st-23rd 2022. Returning in-person after 3 years with more than 2000 attendees including 150 world-class speakers, the event offers unparalleled networking and insights from the world’s most senior corporate treasurers. treasuryXL is proud media partner of the 31st edition of the EuroFinance event.

Why attend?

  • Be inspired by headline speakers as they interrogate a changed world including Guy Verhofstadt, member of the European Parliament and Göran Carstedt, former corporate executive of Volvo and IKEA
  • Get practical solutions to treasury challenges with new case studies and immersive discovery labs
  • Hear from the disruptors at the new The Future of Money Stage
  • Delve into the latest innovations and new technology driving change, and how to apply them to your treasury
  • Meet with more than 100 banking and tech partners and join forces to innovate and shape the future

 

For the full agenda and to register, please click here

TreasuryXL contacts can claim a 10% discount with code: MKTG/TXL10

 

Myths and basics of RFPs

25-04-2022 | treasuryXL | Treasury Delta | LinkedIn | RFPs are one of the less attractive parts of projects, although a necessary evil. Treasurers hate them because to set up this huge document and organise the necessary stakeholders it takes time and effort, while remaining highly manual. Let’s break down the myths around tenders and see […]

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Effective API Strategies Go Beyond Banks & Payments

21-04-2022 | treasuryXL | Kyriba | LinkedIn |

 

By Brian Blihovde, Senior Director, Product Marketing

Source

Bank Connectivity is Only the Beginning of the Transformation Journey

CFOs looking to optimize their processes and systems view APIs as a gateway to enterprise-wide liquidity and the organization’s financial capabilities and health. Finance transformation starts with bank connectivity, leading to real-time decision-making, but the opportunities do not stop there. Bank connectivity and payments help finance deliver more complete, real-time information to all parts of the business. This is the benefit from composable financial systems and design. CFOs, treasurers, and their IT counterparts must all collaborate, consider and plan how transformations continue to drive impacts beyond bank connectivity for all of finance and business units as well.

Finance and the business units to include manufacturing, warehousing, inventory, sales, and distribution all comprise enterprise-level functions contributing important strategic decision-making information. APIs should be used to drive transformation, resilience of data, efficiency, and real-time reporting. Strategic liquidity decision-making will improve once IT and finance can collaborate.

Legacy Systems Don’t Exist with New Data Unification Strategies

CEOs and CFOs are finding it harder to justify an entire re-do of their systems landscapes. CFOs should not look at their systems as “legacy” as API integration can take data and transform it into information and expanded decision-making capabilities. This API-driven unification of data from systems available and stored within various databases and systems across the organization. Legacy is an outdated concept when leading-edge, comprehensive APIs are introduced as technology enablers.

Information, today, is compiled, rationalized, and optimized with APIs regardless of the source system or application; definitions of “legacy” are not relevant any longer. CFOs and finance leaders make decisions with aggregated data transformed into business intelligence repositories from the information they have today and at reduced timelines with leading APIs.

Doing More with Less: APIs Beyond the Bank

Treasury and finance can do more when they use a vendor with integrative API capabilities beyond payments and banking alone. Integrating procurement, ERPs, GLs, and other third-party systems delivers the data unification needed for a comprehensive decision-making platform. Today, APIs go beyond banking and payments for integration across:

  • Investment Portals
  • FX Trading Platforms & Hedge Management
  • Market Data Providers
  • Supplier Services (for Working Capital Programs)
  • Security Profile and Governance Management

Taking Next Steps

To obtain better, and more accurate access to finance information, APIs link the systems used to compile and compose this data into an automated and real-time systemic process. When synchronous ERP, ancillary and core treasury systems collectively feed into the strategic cash flow forecasting process and BI dashboards, the result is a comprehensive view of mid and longer-term flows equaling less effort, more insight and better decision-making.

Enterprise views of cash and liquidity begin with bank connectivity as it provides the needed access to payments, cash and liquidity availability and should always be real-time. However, it is not the end of the story; today’s organizations require more prescriptive, forward-looking capabilities only delivered with information flows like procure to pay and order to cash cycles from the entire unified financial landscape. These holistic, API-integrative systems can generate the business information and intelligence needed to quickly make better decisions and speed the success of today’s organization.

To learn more on how new leading APIs are becoming the standard for how finance and treasury become more than information stewards, but rather catalysts and centers of excellence for better strategic decision-making for their greater organizations – www.kyriba.com.

Click here to view all blogs by Kyriba

Attend the 33rd Finance Symposium | 18-20 May 2022 | Mannheim

20-04-2022 | treasuryXL | LinkedIn |

 

The treasury and finance community finally meets in person again. treasuryXL is proud media partner of the 33rd Finance Symposium.

 

 

For more than 30 years, the Finance Symposium has developed into the most important industry gathering for treasurers and finance managers in the German-speaking world. Every year, around 2,300 finance experts meet to discuss together, make contacts and receive new impetus. The outstanding congress program offers visitors a broad spectrum of professionally challenging topics from finance and treasury management in three days. In over 170 forums, workshops and expert panels, participants will learn about the latest developments in finance and treasury.

 

 

The speakers are high-ranking finance managers from major companies and prominent guests from politics and business. For example, in 2022 Martin Schulz, former President of the European Parliament , and Verena Pausder, entrepreneur and expert in digital education, could be won for exciting presentations and discussions. The most important banks, system providers and financial service providers in the industry will present themselves on 1,000 m2 of exhibition space.

For more information and tickets, visit: www.finanzsymposium.com

 

 

 

Kendra Keydeniers

Director, Community & Partners at treasuryXL

 

 

 

 

Your free eBook, What is Treasury?

13-04-2022 | treasuryXL | LinkedIn |

 

Receive your eBook What is Treasury? after subscribing to the free treasuryXL weekly newsletter.

The world of Treasury is a complex topic. Many people will think about pirates and big see ships that sank deep into the bottom of the ocean including their ‘treasure’. A mystery treasure map will lead the finder to a treasure worth a lot of money. In some way Treasury and Treasure have similarities, it is about money and other valuables.

Are you having a hard time how to explain what treasury is to family, friends and colleagues? Or are you interested to learn more about the World of Treasury?

 

Subscribe and Download

treasuryXL created a 41 pages eBook for the corporate treasurers and the world of finance addict.

This eBook is designed to answer layman questions about the function of Treasury. treasuryXL bundled the most important information for you and created an easy to read and understand articles about the main subjects within the World of Treasury:

This ebook will answer your questions about Treasury topics.

treasuryXL explains the purpose of each Treasury function; what specialists do, examples of activities, FAQs, and a summary.

This ebook is based on the most relevant best practices that Treasury experts provided over the last years. On the website of treasuryXL you can explore additional information on the latest in Corporate Treasury.

 

HAVE FUN READING!

 

 

Kendra Keydeniers

Director, Community & Partners at treasuryXL

 

 

 

 

EuroFinance International Treasury Management returns to Vienna | 21-23 September 2022

08-04-2022 | Eurofinance | treasuryXL |

 

Featuring keynote speakers, Guy Verhofstadt and Göran Carstedt…

The 31st annual EuroFinance International Treasury Management 2022 will return this September with more than 2,000 attendees, 150 speakers, 100 sponsors and exhibitors.

 

 

For the first in-person event in three years, EuroFinance International Treasury Management keynote speakers will include Guy Verhofstadt, member of the European Parliament and Göran Carstedt, former corporate executive of Volvo and IKEA.

The full line-up brings more than 150 global corporate treasury leaders, financial institutions, technology providers and thought-leaders together to discuss the theme “Treasury in transition”, across 12 stages at Vienna’s Messe Wien Exhibition Congress Center from September 21st-23rd 2022.

Guy Verhofstadt is a Member of the European Parliament and co-chair of the Conference on the Future of Europe. He served as prime minister of Belgium from 1999 until 2008 and also made a name for himself as Brexit coordinator and as a passionate champion of more European integration. He will give the opening keynote on day 1.

Dr Göran Carstedt is the former head of IKEA North America and IKEA Retail Europe and former head of VOLVO France and Volvo Sweden. Having run some of the world’s leading companies, Dr Carstedt is also the former senior director of President Clinton’s Climate Change Initiative. He will give the opening keynote presentation on day 2 on how climate change is changing business.

Corporate treasury leaders from some of the world’s top multinationals – including TechnipFMC, Citrix Systems, Kongsberg Automotive, Autoneum, Equinor, Heinz, Medtronic, John Lewis – have also been confirmed.

 

“We look forward to seeing people connecting and collaborating face-to-face once again in Vienna. It’s great to see live events bouncing back across the world and from the response we have had so far,  it’s clear that our community of speakers, banks and technology providers are eager to meet in-person after 2 years of virtual meetings.” says Asif Chaudhury, Managing Director of EuroFinance.

 

Irreversibly changed after the events of the past few years, this year’s theme will explore the “new” treasury; a highly digital and automated function tasked with meeting strategic goals and changing remits against a backdrop of multiple issues from climate change to high inflation. Treasurers will share their experience in practical case studies and technical discovery labs and celebrate the innovations that will drive change.

EuroFinance’s growing list of sponsors and exhibitors for the event includes  J.P. Morgan Chase, Standard Chartered, Citi, Bank of America, BNP Paribas,, Fitch Group, HSBC, Santander Corporate & Investment Banking, Visa, Société Générale, ION, TIS, Remote Technology, B2C2, American Express, Bayerische Landesbank, UniCredit, PrimeRevenue, Northern Trust Asset Management, Credit Agricole, Zanders, ICD, Pictet Asset Management, Raiffeisen Bank, BlackRock, Legal and General, Tietoevry, Amundi, CMSpi, Nomentia, Aviva Investors Global Services, CashAnalytics, Treasury Systems, CoCoNet, Exalog, Traxpay, SisID, Finastra.

For more information and to register, visit: https://www.eurofinance.com/international

About EuroFinance

EuroFinance, part of The Economist Group, is a leading global provider of treasury, cash management and risk events, research and training. With over 30 years of experience, our mission is to bring together the brightest minds and most influential voices in treasury. Through in-depth research with 1,000 corporate treasury professionals every year, we have a unique insight into the trends and developments within the profession and an unrivalled global viewpoint.

Contacts

Marianne Ford
Senior Marketing Manager
EuroFinance

Economist Impact
[email protected]

 

 

Treasury RFP’s digitization

06-04-2022 | treasuryXL | Treasury Delta | LinkedIn | The optimal, objective, and transparent selection of treasury supplier solutions and/or banking services, observing procurement principles and guidelines, remains a complicated challenge for all treasurers. It is extremely time-consuming and cost-ineffective. This article highlights a niche fintech solution developed by Treasury Delta to successfully digitize the […]

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The top challenges that will affect your FX risk strategy in 2022

04-04-2022 | treasuryXL | Kantox | LinkedIn |

“The year of predictable unpredictability”, as The Economist calls it. But what challenges lay in store for risk managers in 2022 when it comes to their FX risk strategy?

Credits: Kantox
Source

 

1. Shifting interest rate differentials across currencies

Let’s start with the first of our challenges that will affect your FX risk strategy in 2022, namely shifting interest rate differentials across currencies. This is the result of central banks reacting to inflation and inflation expectations. This will, in all likelihood, lead to increasing differences between FX rates with different value dates—also known as forward points. Central banks from a wide range of countries have adjusted their short-term interest rates in 2021, and more are set to act in 2022: Chile, Brazil, Czech Republic, UK, Hungary, Poland, NZ, South Africa, and South Korea among others.

Is your company well-prepared to manage those shifts? Is it well-prepared to take advantage of favourable forward points? In the event of ‘favourable’ forward points, for example, when a company sells and hedges in a currency that trades at a forward premium, pricing with the forward rate would allow that company to price more competitively—without endangering its profit margins.

As Toni Rami, Kantox’s Co-founder and Chief Growth Officer says, “most companies fail to take advantage of this opportunity, either because they lack the technology to do it, or because they are not aware of it, or because of both”.

Is it well prepared to protect itself from unfavourable forward points? This is shaping up to be a key concern in 2022. It would be the case, for example, of a company that sells (and hedges) in a currency or in currencies that trade at a forward discount, like a Europe- or a US-based firm that sells, for example, in Brazil.

This company could protect itself by setting boundaries around its FX pricing rate by means of automated and dynamically updated profit-taking and stop-loss orders in order to delay as much as possible the execution of the hedges. Failure to have this mechanism in place will mean:

(a) unnecessary financial losses due to the cost of carry (a key point in 2022 given recent developments in central bank policies)

(b) too much capital tied up in terms of collateral/margin requirements

(c) not enough time at your disposal in order to fine-tune and improve your forecasts (FX surveys consistently show that CFOs and treasurers would like to have more time at their disposal to fine-tune and improve their forecasts)

2. Ongoing pressure on profit margins

Turning to the second challenge, is the ongoing pressure on profit margins. There is a clear need for better, more dynamic pricing systems, as McKinsey surveys consistently show. Does your company have a proper system to price with FX rates? On the face of it, this looks like a simple proposition. It’s not. It requires a system to fetch the appropriate FX rate with criteria in terms of:

(a) sourcing the FX rate;

(b) communicating that FX rate to commercial teams

(c) updating that rate according to time-based or data-driven criteria.

And it also requires a system to create the FX-pricing rules that your business needs. Failure to have these systems in place will likely result in not being able to properly set the pricing markups —per client segment and per currency pair— that your commercial strategy requires and not being able to adequately use the forward rate for pricing purposes.

Take, again, the case of unfavourable forward points, namely a firm that sells and hedges in a currency that trades at a forward discount, or that buys and hedges in a currency that trades at a forward premium. With the proper pricing rules in place, the firm needs to price with the forward rate. That would allow it to avoid unnecessary financial losses on the carry. In 2022, with several EM central banks preparing to further raise short-term interest rates, this is likely to be a critically important element in any FXRM strategy.

3. The uncertain FX markets outlook

Finally, the uncertain FX markets outlook is a reminder of the importance of having a solid FX risk management strategy in place in 2022. According to Citi’s latest Treasury Diagnostics survey, 79% of risk managers have exposure to non-G10 currencies, in many cases unhedged because of costs, liquidity and regulations; 60% of treasurers expect a new client base in emerging markets to be the largest driver of FX-denominated sales growth. Yet 57% of CFOs say they suffered lower earnings in the past two years due to significant unhedged FX risk (worldwide), rising to 77% in EMEA. America: 61%, Asia: 43% (HSBC survey).

This requires automated hedging programs and/or combinations of automated hedging programs. Failure to have these programs in place in 2022 is likely to mean: (a) a high variability in performance, whether it is measured in cash-flow terms or in terms of accounting results; (b) failure to adequately protect and enhance operating profit margins; (c) the possibility that your customer’s FX could turn into your own credit risk if excessive currency volatility forces them to wait for a better exchange rate to settle their bills.

Worried about your FX risk health? Take our free assessment and get a personalised insights report in minutes. 

Robotic Process Automation – the Do’s & Don’ts

29-03-2022 | Philip Costa Hibberd | treasuryXL | LinkedIn |

What are 3 key do’s and don’ts to keep in mind in your RPA journey? Find out in this article I wrote, which was originally published in the Summer Edition of the Zanders Magazine.

This article was originally published in the Summer Edition of the Zanders Magazine. Are you interested in knowing more about Process Automation in the realms of Finance, Treasury and Risk Management? Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn.

Original Source

Last year’s spring, we organized a ‘jargon-free’ breakfast session to explore what robotic process automation (RPA) is all about. We had a look under the hood of a complex, hard-working robot and shared experiences on how to make the journey of deploying a digital workforce as smooth as possible. Find a brief summary below, covering (briefly) what RPA is about, what are the 3 main stages of the RPA journey, and what are the key do’s and don’ts per each stage.

RPA

RPA stands for Robotic Process Automation and is software that performs rule-based work, interacting with systems, websites and applications in the same way a human would. It is a powerful tool that, when applied to the complex industries we work in, allows us to focus more on the valuable activities that make our jobs interesting and less on the boring and repetitive tasks that no one wants to do. You can think of it as macros on steroids.

3 Stages of the RPA Journey

You can find the key takeaways from the Breakfast Session, in the form of do’s and don’ts, summarized below for each of the following 3 stages of the RPA journey:

  • Proof-of-concept: very first stage, where you are focused on exploring the possibilities of RPA
  • Early implementation: the stage where you are focused on rolling out a few robots and automating a handful of processes that you still ‘know by name’
  • Growth: the stage where you are focused on rolling out and managing a full digital workforce and automating more processes than you can remember

The 3 Do’s and the 3 Don’ts

Proof-of-concept

✔Do: Have fun!

Did you enjoy playing with Lego when you were a child? Then you will probably enjoy tinkering with RPA. Just like with Lego, spend some time discovering all the different components that you have available and finding out all the different ways you can get them together to craft something useful and tailor-made to your needs. Did you like playing with Barbies better than Lego? That’s also great, don’t worry. Deploying RPA in your team will give you plenty of opportunities to put your role-playing experience to use. Understanding roles, responsibilities, objectives and requirements of a process and effectively communicating the benefit of automating via RPA are the pillars of a successful implementation.

❌ Don’t: Don’t forget to explore slightly more advanced components, such as queues, credential management tools, log management tools, robot orchestration and control rooms.

You don’t want to have to bulldoze and rebuild your shiny proof-of-concept automation in a later stage, just because you weren’t aware of these components. They will become critical once you have more than a few processes at hand.

To stay in the Lego metaphor: make sure to explore the features of the full Lego range and don’t just idle on the baby-friendly Lego Duplo.

Early Implementation

✔Do: Make sure processes and solutions are well documented.

I get it. You want to start building your bot as soon as possible. But make sure to first invest some time in drafting the following documents:

• A Process Design Document to capture at the very least the As-is process flow

• A Solution Design Document to capture how you intend to automate the process

You will be happy to have the former if (when?) you start having discussions on the scope of the work that the bot is expected to perform. It can prevent misunderstanding about what the process is all about and what the bot can do. You will be happy to have the latter if (when?) you have to do some maintenance on the bot that you are now developing. This blueprint will help you to quickly zoom in on the component that you need to tweak.

Good documentation will become even more important as your team grows. Imagine how much karma you will earn when someone in urgent need of fixing the bot finds and reads your clear blueprint!

❌ Don’t: Don’t automate sub-optimal processes.

Get everyone familiar with the concept of GIGO – Garbage In Garbage Out – and its less polite brother SISO. A bad manual process will become a terrible automated process, because robots can only act based on predefined rules. The rules can be as complex as you like but there can’t be any room for discretionary judgment. The untiring robots lack that.

Make it clear that a process needs to be streamlined and standardized before it can be a candidate for automation. If it’s not, someone will have to cross the jungle of “It has always been done this way”, which usually stands between a ‘Garbage Process’ and a ‘Good Process’. Who knows, it might turn out that many tasks and subtasks in the process weren’t needed after all.

Growth

✔Do: Set up a clear RPA Governance.

Once you hit the stage of growth, where your team is rolling out one bot after another, clearly defining the process of automating processes becomes even more important than clearly defining the process that you are automating.

Does the RPA team sit in IT or with the business? Who is responsible for what, in case of a malfunction? How are Audit, Compliance and Risk Management going to adjust policies to include the changes brought in by your new digital workforce?

❌ Don’t: Don’t forget Security.

While designing your RPA Governance framework, don’t forget the more practical side of Security.

You wouldn’t want to allow anyone the temptation of circumventing the four-eyes principle you already have in place. For example, you must make sure it is still impossible for anyone to input a payment to themselves and have it released by the unaware robot accomplice.

Define as soon as possible how you are going to create, assign and manage the credentials that your bots will need to interact with your existing IT infrastructure. Particularly in the case of unattended bots, it would be best to create specific users for your digital colleagues, with clearly distinguishable usernames. You might even consider going as far as letting your robot change all its passwords to ones of its secret liking as soon as it gets in production.

 

 

Philip Costa Hibberd

 

 

 

 

Does your business need support in Treasury or a Treasury QuickScan?

We have treasurers available, go to Rent a Treasurer for all information.



When Is the Right Time to Move to APIs?

23-03-2022 | treasuryXL | Kyriba | LinkedIn |

By Andrew Deichler, Content Manager, Strategic Marketing

Application programming interfaces (APIs) have the potential to revolutionize the treasury and finance function. But when is the time to move to APIs, and when is file transfer protocol (FTP) still sufficient?

Let’s explore the use cases for APIs and when it is appropriate to begin using them. We’ll also look at areas where FTP is still sufficient.

Source

API Use Cases

Largely viewed as conduits for faster bank connections, APIs allow systems to exchange data faster. Unlike FTP, APIs do not require any kind of file download to transmit information; users have instant access to the data they need.

Major ERP providers are working with API developers to embed APIs into their workflows so users don’t need to take any action outside the ERP. For example, Kyriba is working with SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics and others on API connectors. And Kyriba users can also integrate APIs into their ERPs on their own with our plug-and-play solutions.

APIs have nearly limitless potential. They can facilitate an open ecosystem that enables third-party developers to build applications on top of the API provider’s platform. Through such a platform, corporate treasury and finance departments can expedite the flow of data. Kyriba’s Open API hub, launched in 2021, is an online marketplace of real-time connections to apps, data, and new products and services that inject data-driven decision-making into every financial operation.

APIs offer treasury and finance many capabilities that they haven’t had before, such as the power to “un-batch” payments. Rather than relying on batch processes that transmit at several pre-determined times each day, APIs allow payments to be initiated from treasury management systems and ERP systems as needed—even in real time. In fact, real-time payments require the use of an API because payments can’t be transmitted instantly if a file needs to be downloaded.

Furthermore, APIs can also un-batch reporting, allowing organizations to manage cash continuously and in real-time. Just like batch payments, batch reporting is constrained to set times each day. APIs allow treasury and finance teams to receive intraday liquidity updates as needed, improving the ability to position, reconcile and invest cash. And immediate visibility into cash also allows companies to vastly improve forecasting.

FTP Isn’t Going Anywhere Just Yet

All that said, FTP isn’t dying out just yet. Banks and technology solutions providers that are managing open platforms are not replacing legacy formats with APIs; rather, they are offering them as a complement to these formats.

Furthermore, the rollout has been slow; most banks are not using APIs in live production yet. And the ones that do mostly offer them for certain real-time services—meaning that multiple connectivity options are needed to fully support a treasury and finance team.

But even if you have full API capabilities, they may not be appropriate for every type of data transfer yet. Generally speaking, FTP is better for large bulk transfers of data, while APIs are preferable for smaller, more specific transfer needs. And even though APIs can virtually eliminate the need for batching, some organizations may not see a need to end the practice—and they’ll need FTP to do that.

Lastly, FTP has been around for many years, making it compatible with legacy systems. Unlike API connections, which require that systems on both ends support the technology, FTP only requires that the appropriate file format be used. So, FTP won’t require any major conversions for your software. In other words, if the status quo is working for your organization, you may not see the need to make any changes right now.

API and SFTP Capabilities

In many ways, APIs bring key advantages over a file-based approach, such as an immediate response from banks and the ability to receive new data and notifications in real-time. But for the time being, flat-file technology is still very much in use.

Fortunately, Kyriba users don’t have to choose one or the other. Kyriba connects to 600 global banks on behalf of our nearly 2,500 clients using a variety of connection protocols, including APIs and FTP. So regardless of whether your bank and ERP are set up for APIs or not, Kyriba can ensure that you’ll have the right connectivity for your organization.

For more information on APIs, view our API Whitepaper, Fact Sheet and Infographic.