treasuryXL announces partnership with Kyriba to strengthen dissemination of the latest trends about treasury

| 22-4-2020 | treasuryXL | Kyriba |

VENLO, The Netherlands, April 22, 2020 – treasuryXL, the community platform for everyone who is active in the world of treasury, and Kyriba in the Netherlands, the global leader in cloud treasury and finance solutions today announced the signature of a premium partnership.

The partnership aims at offering a continuous flow of treasury content, making treasury knowledge available. This partnership includes:

  • collaboration on messaging, content production, and visibility
  • mutual distribution on select items of interest
  • collaboration on larger themes: event promotion, speaking and experts contribution, publications

Treasury management is currently experiencing a revolution under the effect of digital transformation. With this partnership, treasuryXL and Kyriba are striving to make sure that treasurers are always up to date with the latest news and events in their field.

According to Kendra Keydeniers, treasuryXL “We are happy to welcome Kyriba in our community. Kyriba is recognised by leading analyst firms, treasury and finance trades for its innovation and its leadership in cloud finance solutions. Kyriba will have a prominent role in the Treasury Topic environment with coverage in Cash Management, Risk Management, Treasury Software, Payments & Banking, Fraud & Cyber security and Working Capital Management which is a considerable contribution to our ecosystem.”

“With an increasing focus on digital transformation, financial leaders must be empowered with insights into all the latest treasury trends. They need rapid access to on-the-pulse information around the latest industry news, plus new services and products to support their initiatives for innovation and competitiveness. With this partnership, treasuryXL, Kyriba has access to a well -established communications forum and a wide treasury ecosystem.” says Luuk Linssen at Kyriba.

About treasuryXL

treasuryXL started in 2016 as a community platform for everyone who is active in the world of treasury. Their extensive and highly qualified network consists out of experienced and aspiring treasurers. treasuryXL keeps their network updated with daily news, events and the latest treasury vacancies.

treasuryXL brings the treasury function to a higher level, both for the inner circle: corporate treasurers, bankers & consultants, as well as others that might benefit: CFO’s, business owners, other people from the CFO Team and educators.

treasuryXL offers:

  • professionals the chance to publish their expertise, opinions, success stories, distribute these and stimulate dialogue.
  • a labour market platform by creating an overview of vacancies, events and treasury education.
  • a variety of consultancy services in collaboration with qualified treasurers.
  • a broad network of highly valued partners and experts.

About Kyriba

Kyriba empowers CFOs and their teams to transform how they activate liquidity as a dynamic, real-time vehicle for growth and value creation, while also protecting against financial risk. Kyriba’s pioneering Active Liquidity Network connects internal applications for treasury, risk, payments and working capital, with vital external sources such as banks, ERPs, trading platforms, and market data providers. Based on a secure, highly scalable SaaS platform that leverages artificial and business intelligence, Kyriba enables thousands of companies worldwide to maximize growth opportunities, protect against loss from fraud and financial risk, and reduce costs through advanced automation. Kyriba is headquartered in San Diego, with offices in New York, Paris, London, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Dubai, Singapore, Shanghai and other major locations. For more information, visit www.kyriba.com.

LIVE DEMO: Centralized Cash Visibility

| 10-4-2020 | treasuryXL | OpusCapita |

We are excited to announce that our Partner OpusCapita, is organizing a Live Demo: Centralized Cash Visibility, which highlights the use of management tools that enable you to easily manage your liquidity.

The Live Demo takes place on May 12th, at 13:00 CEST / 14:00 EEST and takes 30 minutes.

OpusCapita believes seeing is believing! In this live demo, they show you how their dashboards enable you to easily manage missing statements or get a quick overview of your cash positions in certain banks, business divisions, companies or bank accounts. With their flexible reporting tool, you can build reports with drag and drop-functionality to meet your reporting needs. With their hierarchy-settings design, you can create your own structures of bank accounts, cash-pools and mix of companies to enable a fully customized visualization of cash positions.

In this live demo, the following topics are covered:

  • Dashboards: How to set up Balance Tracker gadgets for monitoring the bank account statement imports
  • Liquidity Reports: How to build the most commonly used Cash Visibility reports using different dimensions (currency, cashpool, company, business division etc)
  • Hierarchies: How to create and manage bank account and company hierarchies for report purposes
  • How to collect your favorite Cash Visibility Reports in a Dashboard

Who should attend:

This webinar is for treasury professionals who are looking for new ways to take their liquidity management forward.

Presenter:

KARL-HENRIK SUNDBERG
Presales Executive Lead at OpusCapita

Karl-Henrik has a background from CM in Transaction Banking followed by 6 years as head of Cash Management at a Corporate Treasury. As CM Presales in OpusCapita he is involved in sales, RFPs, product demos and product development of the next generation Cash Management modules.

Registration, date and time

  • To register, fill out this form.
  • Date: May 12th
  • Start: 13:00 CEST / 14:00 EEST
  • Duration: 30 minutes.

About OpusCapita

OpusCapita enables organizations to buy and pay quickly and securely, with a real-time view of their business. OpusCapita customers use their source-to-pay and cash management solutions to connect, transact and grow. OpusCapita processes over 100 million electronic transactions annually on its Business Network.

Visit OpusCapita

Visit Partner Page

Read Customer Success Stories

OpusCapita makes Liquidity Management free for all customers

| 26-3-2020 | treasuryXL | OpusCapita |

OpusCapita makes Liquidity Management in a basic version free for their SaaS customers

OpusCapita, treasuryXL partner and leading cash management solution provider announces today that they have chosen to make their Liquidity Management product free for all customers until the end of the year in order to help treasury and cash management professionals to meet the increased demand on accurate cash forecasts due to the spread of the coronavirus.

“We are living in unprecedented times and we want to help our customers. The demands on treasurers are immense right now and I feel if we can help by making our product for free it’s the right thing to do”, states Jukka Sallinen, Head of Cash Management, OpusCapita.

Liquidity Management will be available in a basic version to allow customers to start using it right away without any implementation or set-up needs.

“We are also looking for ways to enable companies who are not our customers to use this functionality at a heavily discounted price”, states Jukka Sallinen, Head of Cash Management, OpusCapita. 

“I am happy that we can help our customers in these tough times and that we as a company can do our part”, states Patrik Sallner, CEO OpusCapita.

What does Liquidity Management Basic enable you to do?

With the basic package, you will be able to enable your subsidiaries across the globe to manually input (or upload from Excel) their current cash balances and future cash flows (for example AR, AP, taxes etc) in OpusCapita. Once you have this data centralized, the basic package enables you to setup Reports and Dashboards which will automatically consolidate and display all entered balances and cash flows.

In short, this includes:

  • Manually entering cashflows (Liquidity Unit Entry)
  • Manually entering cash positions (Liquidity Balance Entry)
  • Liquidity grid and graph, best-practice Reports such as:
    • Cash Visibility
      • Cash balances per bank account, per bank or per company
      • Actual inflows and outflows on bank accounts (if statements are imported in OpusCapita)
    • Cash Forecasting
      • Total forecast
      • Forecast per bank account, per company or per currency
      • Actual vs Forecast
    • Dashboards for visualizations cash positions and forecast

Three steps to get started

1. Get in touch with us so we can enable Liquidity Basic for you.

2. Add cash flows with pre-built templates or import them from Excel.

3. Build reports with our straight-forward drag’n’ drop functionality.

 

Read more information here.

 

About OpusCapita

OpusCapita enables organizations to buy and pay quickly and securely, with a real-time view of their business. OpusCapita customers use their source-to-pay and cash management solutions to connect, transact and grow. OpusCapita processes over 100 million electronic transactions annually on its Business Network.

Visit OpusCapita

Visit Partner Page

Read Customer Success Stories

treasuryXL announces partnership with OpusCapita

| 19-3-2020 | treasuryXL | OpusCapita |

treasuryXL announces partnership with OpusCapita, a leading cash management provider.

VENLO, The Netherlands, MARCH 19, 2020 – treasuryXL, the community platform for everyone who is active in the world of treasury, today announced the premium partnership with a leading cash management provider, OpusCapita.

As a marketplace, treasuryXL will offer OpusCapita market commentary and insight to its audience. Offering a continuous flow of relevant treasury content, making treasury knowledge available, results in treasuryXL being the obvious go-to platform for its’ audience. OpusCapita will have a prominent role in the Treasury Topic environment with coverage in Cash Management, risk management, Treasury Software, Payments & Banking and Fraud & Cybersecurity. Together they will host virtual roundtables in the near future to connect with partners and experts around the world.

“We are excited to take part in the treasury community that TreasuryXL is building and look forward to join the network of treasury experts.” Marc Josefsson, Head of Strategic Sales, OpusCapita.

OpusCapita has over 800 customers across more than 100 countries. Their secure, cloud-based solution enables Treasury and Finance professionals to harmonize global processes and policies, centralize treasury and finance operations and reduce complexity.

treasuryXL and OpusCapita strive for a fruitful partnership where its’ audience are top of mind making sure that (potential) clients are always up to date with the latest cash management news and events benefit from a comprehensive range of services and products.

About treasuryXL

treasuryXL started in 2016 as a community platform for everyone who is active in the world of treasury. Their extensive and highly qualified network consists out of experienced and aspiring treasurers. treasuryXL keeps their network updated with daily news, events and the latest treasury vacancies.

treasuryXL brings the treasury function to a higher level, both for the inner circle: corporate treasurers, bankers & consultants, as well as others that might benefit: CFO’s, business owners, other people from the CFO Team and educators.

treasuryXL offers:

  • professionals the chance to publish their expertise, opinions, success stories, distribute these and stimulate dialogue.
  • a labour market platform by creating an overview of vacancies, events and treasury education.
  • a variety of consultancy services in collaboration with qualified treasurers.
  • a broad network of highly valued partners and experts.

About OpusCapita

OpusCapita enables organizations to buy and pay quickly and securely, with a real-time view of their business. OpusCapita customers use their source-to-pay and cash management solutions to connect, transact and grow. OpusCapita processes over 100 million electronic transactions annually on its Business Network.

Visit OpusCapita

Visit Partner Page

Read Customer Success Stories

Are we entering an unprecedented economic situation?

| 28-02-2020 | treasuryXL | Pieter de Kiewit

One of my favourite professional pastimes as a corporate treasury recruiter is digesting treasury technical content and bridging it to the “rest of the world”. Or see what is happening in the global news and projecting it on the field of corporate treasury.

Currently there is a constant flow of news about too much money in the market. One would say this is a good thing. Let me give you some positive and negative examples of the effects:

But also:

  • Pension funds are not able to invest in a future-proof way;
  • We have to pay for our savings (if you have a lot);
  • Hedge fund managers use external funding, instead of the funding of their investors, to safeguard their bonuses.

We enter an unprecedented economic situation only encountered by Japan and there is no obvious path to take. I will not try to clarify macro economics, it is not my field of expertise, but do know that changing demographics contribute. Us getting older and people retiring rich, most likely richer than their kids, has to do with this. What do I see as effects on corporate treasury? Let’s focus on three main tasks of a corporate treasurer.

In cash & liquidity management there are many exciting initiatives in the improvement of cash flow forecasting. Payments can technically be done smoother, safer and quicker. Cash visibility can be increased and liquidity is centralized. Most corporate treasurers want to implement these new solutions. As liquidity is high, many CFOs do not feel the urgency to invest in these initiatives. Doing nothing will not result in higher cost, so what is the ROI?

In risk & investment management the obvious focus is on interest developments. The general opinion is that interest will be low for a very long time. Getting long term funding for (almost) 0% is doable. So why bother matching long and short term funding options? This results in a situation that the use of hedging instruments is less important. Investing excess cash or helping the company pension fund with their strategy currently requires analysis and choices.

Corporate Finance has the fun task of optimizing the balance sheet and lowering funding costs to an extreme. I recently met the group treasurer of a real estate company who is able to make money attract funding for his company! The more challenging task of corporate finance is participation in business development and M&A. The willingness of entrepreneurs, shareholders and boards to invest in adventurous ways is high. The corporate treasurer has to hold on to his role of risk manager and hit the brake. This does often not increase his popularity…

A lot more can be said about the topic, that will be for other blogs. Back to a non-corporate mindset and not pretending to be a socialist, I hope all this money will be used to improve the world: better the environment, lowering the income gaps, makes us all happier. The real philosophical approach I leave to Notorious B.I.G.

Enjoy your money,

 

 

Pieter de Kiewit

Owner at Treasurer Search

Corporate Governance and Treasury | Embrace the Corporate Treasury Policy

| 18-02-2020 | François de Witte | treasuryXL |


Corporate Governance

Corporate Governance is a mechanism through which boards and directors can direct, monitor and supervise the conduct and operation of the corporation and its management in a way that ensures appropriate levels of authority, accountability, stewardship, leadership, direction and control.

The ultimate responsibility for Treasury management within an organization lies with the board of directors. Due to the practicalities and technical aspects involved in corporate treasury, the board typically delegates the daily management of risk to responsible individuals in each department. In the case of financial risks, many of these are delegated to the treasurer.

Whilst, due to its specific activities, the corporate treasurer needs to take a lot of actions and decisions independently, it is important that he does this within a framework and Governance. Quite a lot of corporates have formalized this in a “Corporate Treasury Policy”.

Corporate Treasury Policy

The Corporate Treasury Policy is the mechanisms by which the board, or risk management committee (RMC), can delegate financial decisions in a controlled manner. This document should be a summary of all the principles approved by the Board or the Financial Committee of the Board as a mandate of the Board to the treasurer (the Treasury Mandate).

The Corporate Treasury Policy is a framework document, which covers the following areas:

Organization of the Treasury Function

In most of the companies, the Corporate Treasury Reports to the CFO. The CFO is usually himself a Member of the Executive Committee, which itself reports directly to the Board of Directors. (Treasurer – CFO – Treasury Committee – Audit Committee – Board):

A policy should set out clearly which decisions are delegated to the treasurer and when the treasurer should refer a decision back to the board or other person within the organization. Within several corporate, the Board of Directors have delegated the decision process to dedicated committee, like the Risk Committee, and the Liquidity and Funding Committee.

Treasury Control Framework (including the Code of Conduct)

Procedures and controls to manage the risk should be put in place to provide an overall framework for decision-making by the treasury team.

Ideally, this should also include a code of conduct. The Corporate Treasurer should act as a Corporate Custodian. In other words, he is Protector of the company’s assets, and should act according to a strict Code of Conduct and Ethics. There exist examples of codes developed by professional organizations such as IGTA, ATEB, AFTE, ACT and ATEL.

Liquidity and funding

The board should be informed about funding possibilities to put currency, maturity, cost and equity/debt character into a wider context. The board should decide on the strategy but can delegate fund raising decisions and actions to treasury. However, I recommend that Treasury asks the final board approval for strategic decisions (e.g. major syndicated loans, bond issues, etc.).

The board should have an overall view on the liquidity risk of the company. The Board should also define the financial policy, covering the gearing and maturity issues, fixed and variable interest rate obligations, dividend policy and covenants.

Banking Relationship

Banks chosen by the treasurer must be able to meet the needs of the organization, both domestically and internationally. I recommend that the Board approves annually criteria for selecting the banks with whom it will work.

Risk Management

The Treasurer must identify the various risks to which the company is exposed, quantify the impact, and should inform the Board thereof. He should estimate the size of these exposure risks and their impact on the he overall operations and financial performance of the company, and make recommendations in these areas

The board must approve the hedging policy, the company’s foreign exchange, interest rate and commodity risk management policy and its attitude to risk. It should define which part of the risks must be hedged and the hedging horizon. I recommend that the Treasurer submits at regular intervals to the Board the list of authorized instruments, the amount per instrument and their term

Investment Policy – Counterparty Credit Risk

The board should approve the treasury’s Investment policy including the choice of instruments, the list of counterparties used + the maximum amount/counterparty & maturity. It is recommended that the Board provides guidelines and limits per instrument.

It is recommended that the Board approves the guidelines for fixing counterparty limits, and maximum exposure per counterparty.

Authorized instruments and Arrangements – Authorized Approvers

The Treasurer should make sure that the board must understands and approve the strategies and instruments used and sets guidelines for the appropriate limits for their use. These guidelines need to ensure that treasury has not sacrificed long-term flexibility or

survival for short-term gain, especially in view of the volatile financial market’s situation.

Treasury Operational Risk

The treasurer should make the Board aware of the operational risks to which the company is exposed. He should provide recommendations in this area. Furthermore, the treasurer should also submit recommendations to the board on the treasury organization and the ways to reduce the operational risks.

Monitoring

A Corporate Treasury Policy has only sense, if there is a regular follow up and control framework; Hence procedures and controls to manage the risk should be put in place to provide an overall framework for decision-making by the treasury team.

It is also important to provide to the Board a regular update on the way the treasurer complies with the policy. The policy should also be regularly reviewed.

Treasury must alert the board to external changes and internal strategic developments, which may have long-term implications for the organization and make proposals for managing them.

The policy needs also to be reviewed at regular intervals each “Policy” in function of the market and of other internal or external developments. I recommend having treasury on the Board’s agenda on a quarterly basis.

Conclusion

Treasury is not an island in the company. It is closely linked to the corporate governance. Hence it is important to define the right framework.

I recommend to corporates to put in place a treasury policy validated by the Board of Directors and reviewed regularly. It is important to update the Board at regular intervals about strategic topics, such as strategic financing topics and risk management.

The treasurer has also an important educational role, as he must be able to make complex treasury topics understandable for the board members.

Hence there must be a good interaction between the treasurer, the CFO and the Board is key, where the Treasurer is the linking pin.

 

François de Witte
Founder & Senior Consultant at FDW Consult
Managing Director and CFO at SafeTrade Holding S.A.
treasuryXL ambassador

Digitalization enhances the strategic position of the treasurer

| 27-12-2019 | TIS | treasuryXL

Discover how you can skillfully use digitalization to play a greater strategic role in your company.

Digitalization is changing the business model of every company. In this factsheet, you will gain valuable expert insights on how you can use digitalization to enhance your strategic position. You will also learn why the opportunities of digitalization do not by any means poses a threat. Read more about:

  1. Digitalization as a horizontal phenomenon
  2. Data is the treasurer’s new gold
  3. Being a sparring partner for the CEO

New technologies are coming to the fore, which redefine the payment area. Especially treasurers will benefit from the expert insights. Do not miss this beneficial factsheet!

Request your download here.

To swap, or not to swap that is the question

30-9-2019 | Marco Lassche |

Cash management in different currencies:
The FX swap, a way to optimize your interest result

Years ago, when I made my first baby steps in the world of Treasury at Bank Mendes Gans, my old teachers Jan Loohuis and Aart-Jan Lensvelt, taught me some good lessons. One of them, that I always used in the companies that I have worked for, is this one.

What if you have temporary an overall negative position in one currency (e.g. -/- EUR 10 mio) and an overall positive position in another currency (e.g. +/+ USD 11 mio)?

Basically you have two easy ways to manage this liquidity position and optimize your interest result. Both ways lead to Rome:

  • Keep the balances in your bank account
  • You swap the balances in different currencies temporary by means of a FX-swap

Option 1: Keep the balances in your bank account
This option does not need much clarification.

  • For your debit balance you pay interest (basic interest +/+ margin)
  • For your credit balance you receive credit interest (basic interest -/- margin

Option 2: The FX swap
In a FX swap you do a trade in your FX trade portal, in which you exchange the bank balances at a spot date (at the spot rate) and you reverse it at a future date (at the forward-rate). You do the trade at the same time, so no FX risk is involved.

Forward FX-rates are being calculated directly from the spot FX-rate and are adjusted for the difference in interest rates between the two currencies.

FX swap visualised

Option 1 or option 2?
When the interest rate difference between the two currencies is more attractive in option 1, you keep your bank balances. When the interest rate difference between two currencies is more attractive in option 2, you swap.

Example
I would like to clarify it by an example in which we have a EUR balance of -/- EUR 10 mio and a
USD balance of +/+ USD 11 mio. We will swap the currencies for 1 month (30 days).

Interest results after 30 days

Option 1) Interest result by keeping balances in your bank account

Total interest proceeds in USD: EUR 2,708 * 1.1000 = USD 2,979 + USD 18,563 = USD 21,542.
Interest rate difference between USD and EUR: 2,35% (2.025% -/- 0.325%).

Option 2) Interest result by swapping balances

Interest result FX swap

At the start date we buy EUR 10 mio, and sell USD 11 mio at the spot rate 1.1000.
At the end date, after 30 days, we reverse the trade as we agreed with the bank:
We sell EUR 10 mio, and buy USD 11,025,770 at the agreed forward rate 1.102577

Our total interest rate difference proceeds is USD 11,025,770 – USD 11,000,000 = USD 25,770.

Conclusion:
In this example the FX swap is USD4,200 more attractive than keeping the account balances like it is. Of course, this is not always the case, but a FX swap can be a good alternative in many cases.

* How to calculate the interest rate difference between two currencies in a FX swap
As previously said, the difference in spot and forward rates, can be explained by the interest rate difference between two currencies, We calculate the interest rate differences as follows:

Forward Rate on annual basis / Spot Rate

As interest percentages are always based on 1 year we multiply the 30 days forward points by 12 to get to 1 year forward points (EUR and USD, calculate 360 days in a year, GBP e.g. 365 days).
The forward points for 30 days: 25.77, which means for one year 12 * 25.77 = 309.24
Forward rate on annual basis: 1.130924

Spot rate: 1.1000

1.130924/1.1000 = + 2,81%

Please feel free to contact me if you need any further information.

 

 

 

Marco Lassche 

Founder and Owner of at Bedrijfskostenexpert
Treasurer and Project Manager at Van Caem Klerks Group
treasuryXL Ambassador

 

 

Is your company struggling with liquidity forecasting?

| 12-09-2019 | treasuryXL | Cashforce |

Is your company struggling with liquidity forecasting?
Find out how you can transform your forecasts from bad to best.

Too much manual effort and too little time for analysis, a statement (too) many treasurers can relate to. According to PwC and their Global Treasury Benchmark Survey, still 87% of treasurers use technology from the 1980s (i.e. spreadsheets) or have a disparate set of ERP systems, multiple bank websites and email. Consequentially, this leads to a lack of visibility and makes it very arduous to answer critical questions like “Is my company over borrowed, underinvested or overexposed?”.

An inability to answer this question not only constrains treasury’s ability to measure its success but could harm the future viability of the company. With automated and accurate forecasts & simulations within reach, this is a clearly avoidable risk.

During this one hour webinar, Bruce Lynn of the FECG and Nicolas Christiaen from Cashforce discuss how to radically optimize your cash forecasting workflows by:

  • Identifying the operating risks by utilizing existing resources
  • Quantifying the benefits to be gained by examining existing “flows” regarding cash, accounting, work, and information, whether across treasury, the business units or other financial parts of the company.
  • Using a step-by step approach to set up an accurate & automated forecast

About Cashforce

Cashforce is a ‘next-generation’ digital Cash Forecasting & Treasury Platform, focused on analytics, automation and integration. Cashforce connects the Treasury department with other finance / business departments by offering full transparency into its cash flow drivers, accurate & automated cash flow forecasting and working capital analytics. The platform is unique in its category because of the seamless integration with numerous ERPs & banking systems, the ability to drill down to transaction level details, and the intelligent AI-based simulation engine that enables multiple cash flow scenarios, forecasts & impact analysis.

Cashforce is a global company with offices in New York, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Paris & London and provides Cash visibility to multinational corporates across various industries in over 120 countries worldwide.

 

The challenges of liquidity planning and forecasting

| 17-06-2019 | treasuryXL | Cashforce |

For more than a decade, liquidity and cash flow forecasting have remained in the top three challenges for CFOs and treasurers globally. This begs the question: why has this been a perennial challenge for so long? The reason: treasury operations today are, for the most part, a series of unintegrated systems, spreadsheets and silos between groups and other departments.

Companies are often faced with multiple ERPs, many entities, and different currencies. These make the task of managing liquidity a major challenge, not to mention a significant manual effort involving many people. The result: lots of time spent gathering and validating data while still not having a full, transparent view into the numbers. The volume, variety, velocity and veracity of data generated each day has made traditional analysis – using spreadsheets, for example – obsolete. It is just not possible to manually aggregate and analyse that much data with sufficient speed to be able to gain insight, and then turn that insight into action. To be able to do so you need the right set of tools.

WHAT SHOULD A TREASURER OR CFO BE ASKING THEMSELVES?

  • Can you identify all your sources of data that you need to make a cash flow forecast? Eg ERP (how many do you have, are they all on the same instance), CRM, bank statements, trend analysis, manual data (such as budgets).
  • How often do you refresh your short-term/mid-term cash forecast? (Daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or I don’t make a cash forecast).
  • How do you ensure no mistakes happen in your data capturing/consolidation?
  • How do you incentivise your subsidiaries? Local subsidiaries and users typically download information from their ERP, and upload in other types of files to HQ, or in SharePoint, or they will just send Excel files from all over the globe to HQ, which means it’s 100% manual. There’s no real alignment of the processes across subsidiaries and no audit trail at the local level.

WHAT TO CONSIDER?

  • Companies should ensure their information is system-based. In other words, they have full integration with their ERP, so they don’t have to manually download data (it should flow automatically).
  • Any augmentation of data should have an audit trail so that, ultimately, the group treasurer can see who did what, and when they did it.
  • Automate the process and deploy alert functionality, such as reminders for subsidiaries to post their local forecast, and for the group treasurer to look for it.
  • Ensure bank connectivity to enable comparison of actuals with forecast figures.

I HAVE THE DATA. NOW WHAT?

With this data, treasurers should now be able to answer these four key questions: what happened; why did it happen; what will happen; and what should be done?

  • Descriptive analytics answers the question, “what happened?” This is the most basic form of big data analytics, and provides a picture of past events.
  • Diagnostic analytics, “why did it happen?” Diagnostic analytics enables you to perform root cause analysis and use that information to prevent future repetition of events.
  • Predictive analytics, “what will happen?” Predictive analytics uses advanced algorithms – often with artificial intelligence and machine learning – to forecast future events.
  • Prescriptive analytics, “what should I do?” Prescriptive analytics tells you what the best steps are to achieve a specific result. Prescriptive analytics requires advanced machine learning capabilities.