Cashforce: Treasury year-end meetup

| 04-01-2018 | Nicolas Christiaen | Cashforce | Sponsored content |

Onderstaand een kort verslag van ons Treasury year-end meetup-event van eind 2017. 

Tim (Jonk – Thomson Reuters) en Martijn (Duijnstee – Cashforce) trapten af met een (uiterst!) korte terugblik op 2017 want alle ogen waren eigenlijk al gericht op het progamma waarin de 3. Top-challenges 2018 voor corporate treasurers de revue zouden passeren.

Nicolas (Christiaen – Cashforce) gaf inzicht in wat er bij komt kijken om, in 6 stappen, een daadwerkelijk nauwkeurig en geautomatiseerd 1. Cash forecasting-proces in te richten. No more Excel!

Bart-Jan (Roelofsz – HERE Technologies) kwam letterlijk net uit ‘de vlieger’ uit Chicago stappen en kon gelijk door naar het podium waar hij een bijzonder aansprekende presentatie gaf over 2. Financing in het algemeen en de transitie van bedrijfsactiviteiten en opbouw van het Treasury en Finance Team in een snel groeiende organisatie. Top!

Alex (Goraieb – Thomson Reuters) nam het stokje over en gaf ons meer dan een kijkje in de wondere wereld van 3. Risk Management. Een wereldreis in de achtbaan van volatiele markten en valuta, via de onderliggende techniek van trading in grote posities naar een lesje ‘hoe selecteer ik de beste bank’. Well done!

En toen was het snel! naar de borrel want in het kader van ‘Act Global, drink Local’ stond het Ijndejaarsbier van Brouwerij ‘t Ij koud en op fust te wachten, en wat had iedereen toch een dorst gekregen…

Tijdens de borrel werden er meerdere robbertjes uitgevochten tijdens de Kick-off 2018 games op de Cashforce-voetbaltafel.

Voor hen die er waren, dank voor jullie komst en voor hen die er niet waren: volgend jaar een nieuwe kans want wat ons betreft zeker voor herhaling vatbaar!

 

Nicolas Christiaen

Managing Partner at Cashforce

 

Re-inventing treasury workflows: Smart Treasury

| 3-8-2017 | Nicolas Christiaen | Cashforce | Sponsored Content |

While the role of the treasurer is changing, it becomes increasingly challenging to maintain the current workflows and simultaneously take on new demanding tasks. One of these often manual and time-consuming tasks is risk management. As seen in, among others, this year’s Global Treasury Benchmark Survey of PwC, the registration and management of financial instruments stands among the top 3 challenges on the agenda of the surveyed treasurers. In this article, we take a more in-depth look at possible optimizations in some key treasury workflows.

 

 

 

 

 

 


Example FX management workflow

Hedging your FX exposure risk made easy

A common problem is the lack of visibility on the existing (global/local) FX exposure risk.
In order to calculate the FX transaction risk, transactional data from the TMS & ERP systems need to be consolidated effectively. Typically, this happens to be a (very) painful exercise. With Cashforce, however, using our off-the-shelf connectors (for ERP & TMS) and our full drill-down capabilities, you have all FX exposures at your fingertips.

 


FX Exposure Management – Current positions & exposures

 

But there is more to it. Imagine that linked to your FX exposure, an automated proposal of the most relevant FX deal would be generated to properly hedge this risk. A grin from ear to ear you say?


FX Exposure Management – Suggested hedge

 

And what about forecasting FX exposures? It’s now all within reach!

FX Exposure Management – Future positions & exposures

 

Whether you choose to take on an intercompany loan, a plain vanilla FX forward or another more exotic derivative product, chosen deals could then be automatically passed on to your deal transaction platform, to effectively execute the deal without any hassle. After execution, deals will automatically flow back into the system. Consequently, a useful summary/overview will be generated to effectively manage all your financial instruments.


Workflow integrated cash forecast

Finally, integrated cash management

New financial instruments / deals will generate a set of related cash flows. Ideally, these are directly integrated in your cash flow forecasts. In Cashforce, this data is automatically integrated within the cash flow forecast module, and will be put into a dedicated cash flow category. Learn more one how to set up an effective cash forecast in this article or this webinar.


Cash flow forecast overview

 

The analysis possibilities are now limitless, thanks to the ability to drill down to the very transactional-level details. The real number crunchers strike gold here: the analysis features open doors to unlimited in-depth analysis and comparison of various scenarios (E.g. the simulated effects of various exchange rate movements).


Drill-down to the transaction level

 

Using our big data engine, the delivery of rich and highly flexible reporting is facilitated. It’s fair to say that the typical SQL server (which currently 95% of the TMS systems use) can’t hold a candle to this. Through an advanced ‘self-service’ interface, users can drill down completely into respective amortization tables, historical transactions and effortlessly create customized reports and dashboards. We’ll talk more about why we believe Big Data engines are crucial for any Treasury software in our next blog.

Integration with ERPs & payment platforms

Next to this, Cashforce will automatically generate the accounting entries (in the format of your ERP/accounting system) related to your deals. The appropriate payment files will be generated in a similar fashion.

So…

As might be clear after reading this article, we strongly believe that integrated data flows & a Big Data engine are the foundation of a new type of Treasury Management System that runs like clockwork and can serve effective treasury departments, but also renewed finance/controlling/FP&A departments.

You are curious to hear more about effective treasury management? We’ve recently recorded a webchat on how to set up an efficient cash flow forecast process.

 

Nicolas Christiaen

Managing Partner at Cashforce

 

Cash forecasting 2.0

| 8-3-2017 | Nicolas Christiaen | Cashforce | sponsored content |



Cash forecasting has been a hot topic in 2016 and it looks like it will keep this status in the years to come.  As Cash Specialist, I’m frequently asked about my vision on this subject. About a month ago, I presented my thoughts to an audience of Group Treasurers & CFOs at the ACT Smart Cash conference in London. During the Q&A, I was asked an intriguing question: “How does a cash management platform, such as Cashforce, differentiate itself from old school Treasury Management Systems in terms of cash forecasting?”

TMS vs. Cash Management/Forecasting platform

Classic Treasury Management Systems (TMS) are focused on inputting, maintaining & managing complicated financial instruments and managing bank connectivity. In other words, they focus on cash optimization from the treasury side.
Cash management & forecasting platforms, on the other hand, focus on cash optimization from the business side. Hence, they typically connect to a company’s ERP systems, in which you’ll find 90% of the company’s cash flows.
And guess what, it’s this refreshing vision on cash optimization that is now attracting the attention by more and more Corporate Treasurers worldwide: they call it “connecting treasury with the business”.

Difference No 1: Transparent cash forecasting

With a classic TMS, a Corporate Treasurer will typically consolidate cash forecasts from the different OpCo’s,  which are already consolidated from the underlying business transactions. So, there is no drill-down available into the business drivers, no assurance on the quality of the data/input/manipulations. This blurs a treasurer’s view on what’s actually happening on the business side, taking away the cash visibility into the company’s different OpCo’s.  Full drill down isn’t offered by a classic TMS due to two main reasons:

  • It is simply not designed for carrying millions of transactions on a daily basis, while cash management/forecasting solutions use a ‘big data’ approach and have built-in engines to process millions of transactions daily.
  • Connecting to each single ERP requires deep knowledge of each of these systems (to avoid long implementation times) and traditionally, Treasury Management Systems didn’t have a need to develop these connectors.

 Difference No 2: Collecting the data in a smart way

One of the pain points often linked to Cash Forecasting, is the lacking ability to merge all relevant data and apply smart logics to it. Indeed, it might be a challenge to connect to all data sources and, at the same time, to do this in a smart way. At Cashforce, our reaction to this issue is twofold: A smart logics engine takes care of the forecasting algorithms, while easy connections to ERPs and other systems (like HRM, CRM..) ensure the continuous supply of rich data.

Defining and applying smart logics are often a challenge to overcome and have an enormous impact on the accuracy of the cash forecast. For example, well-defined smart logics help you to better estimate actual payment times and hence improve the accuracy of a forecast. A TMS system often lacks this powerful ability and has no built-in smart engine for forecasting rules.

Difference No 3: Cash saving from the business instead of treasury optimizations

Finally, driving action from forecasts should be the main objective. Intelligent simulation engines enable companies to consider multiple scenarios and measure their impact. This gives users the power to report on cash saving opportunities and compare options to ultimately pick the better one. As a result, finance departments can be turned into business catalysts for cash generation opportunities throughout the company. In contrast, Treasury Management Systems are not designed to perform complicated business-driven cash simulations.

Complementary or Competitors?

New, often innovative cash management platforms, like Cashforce, are complementary to a TMS and tend to bring a lot of value in working capital intensive businesses. They are complementary, as they have a different focus: Treasury Management Systems look at the entire treasury spectrum in order to improve treasury processes. Cash Management/Forecasting platforms start from the business and want to enable finance departments to become a strategic partner on one of the key growth indicators, cash. On the other hand, for smaller companies, these platforms might be a good alternative for an often expensive TMS, when only limited financial instrument management functionality is required.

Nicolas Christiaen

Managing Partner at Cashforce