| 31-03-2021 | treasuryXL | Cashforce |ACT
Rewatch ACT’s session ‘The importance of Cash management during the crisis: the impact of the Pandemic’ with David Shinkins (Barclays), James Marshall (Virgin Media), Hailey Laverty Hotels & Resorts) & Nicolas Christiaen from our Partner Cashforce.
30-03-2021 | treasuryXL | Kyriba |
Şişecam is a Turkey-based, multi-national glass manufacturer that wanted to centralise payments, get better visibility of the group’s accounts and reduce the potential for fraud. Kyriba helped them achieved all this – and more.
Barış Gokalp, Head of Treasury at Şişecam explains the background to the project: “when I joined Şişecam, it was very decentralised, with each company managing its own banking operation. We had too many banks, over 60 companies and multiple ERP systems. After 2013 we did a lot of M&A so there were various different ERPs. There was also a lots of connection types, including SFTP, fax and email, with no standardisation. Each payment operation had its own route, which made it hard to manage.”
“We realised that first we had to solve the connectivity issue with the banks. We figured out that we were spending a lot of time answering how much money do we have and also on the banking operations for our payments.”
Levent Coskuner, Managing Partner of ELC Strategy which advised Şişecam, explains the approach taken: “we knew the internal culture and structure of financing at Şişecam, so we were looking for the best global solution. Between his arrival at Şişecam and the end of 2018, Barış and I visited various countries to understand the different options. It was very important that the solution was very scalable and secure – security was one of the main issues. And given that they have multiple ERPs, we needed a standardised approach. Kyriba has the number one SaaS solution.”
The project had several key elements. “The focus was on enabling payments for ERP systems, centralising and securing them,” says Nik Romano, Head of Emerging Markets at Kyriba. “But they also wanted to gain visibility into the group’s bank accounts. Şişecam selected us as much on the capability of our technology from an application perspective as on the capability to enable connections across so many banks and so many jurisdictions.”
When the Şişecam team looked at Kyriba’s references they realised that a lot of companies have worries about transactions, and that was one of the key points in their decision.
“The number of transactions is not important to us, rather the variety of those transactions. We saw that our geographic reach – Kyriba’s and Şişecam’s – matched, and when we visited Kyriba clients to get references the feedback was marvellous!” says Gokalp.
Tackling supply chain finance was not on the initial agenda, but when the Şişecam team visited a Kyriba client in France they realised that they could also use the treasury management system for other parts of their treasury activities. So although they began with account visibility and payment operations, they realised that they could also include supply chain finance, FX management, cash flow management and cash flow forecasting.
“As the treasury director I saw that we could manage all our treasury activities on one platform with many banks, many countries and many companies. Perfect!” says Gokalp.
“We began to go live with the various countries within the Şişecam group, and by the end of 2021 we will have finished that. All the connections will be established and all the payments will be done via Kyriba. We have also begun to sort out the supply chain finance issues and we will plug the banks into our supply chain finance because we know that a company’s strength comes from its suppliers. In addition, we know that we can manage our FX position via Kyriba. So we will look at that and, if we can manage to finalise things, we will also use Kyriba’s cash flow management module by the end of next year,” says Gokalp.
Gokalp agrees that fraud was the key motivation for the group’s top management. “As all treasurers know, we need to do the checks before the money leaves,” he says. “You should establish in your workflow rules, so that if there is some ‘noise’ around a payment, you can stop it. We have begun to follow where the money is going and when it will reach us. I hope that by the end of the next year we will be fully digitalised, which is one of the objectives of our organisation. The payment file will come from the ERP and no one will be able to touch it, it goes directly via Kyriba.”
Full digitisation means that when a file is created it goes directly and securely to Kyriba, through the approval process and on to the bank. The ERP and the accountants can see in a couple of minutes what has happened to the payment and, if there is a rejection or some other problem that is also reflected back to the ERP system. This is a fully integrated process.
As with so many clients, the Covid crisis showed Şişecam just what their new system could do.
Gokalp explains: “When the pandemic hit we were initially using Kyriba with five companies in Turkey, but in two days all the companies were able to use Kyriba for payments. So the need for the people to come into the office for the signatures and approvals – that was all removed. That was a big credibility boost for the project as well. Before, it was very hard to make a payment. You sent it to the bank and then it arrived, or, if it didn’t you just sent it again. But now all this is done in 10 minutes max.”
“At first some people internally were worried about this project, but when they understood what the project entailed, they too wanted to be part of it.”
Şişecam is one of the biggest glass manufacturers in the world, based in Turkey but with operations in the Eurozone, Russia, India and Egypt. The group manufactures all sorts of glass – table glass, glass packaging, flat glass and automotive glass – and also produces the chemicals used to produce glass. It has 20 companies worldwide and is working with approximately 60 banks.
25-03-2020 | treasuryXL | Pieter de Kiewit
Efficiency, lack of expertise, stability and other reasons are all perfectly fine to consider outsourcing in general. Based upon input about outsourcing of trading in an asset management environments we decided to ask prominent corporate treasurers if they think this might work in their company. This is my, very personal, report about the meeting.
Being a treasury recruiter I hear interesting stories about the professional lives of clients, candidates and others. Not too long ago I spoke with Dmitry Zamkovoy of Milliman. He told me about their outsourcing services for financial institutions, not only middle and back office functions but also trading operations. Together we wondered if this would work for corporates. See also his article ‘Outsourced trading, is it time to make the switch? Nine factors to consider’
Most of my clients are corporate treasuries with teams with up to dozens of staff members dealing with large banks who employ thousands of specialists. Corporate treasurers have to know a lot about various topics, have important responsibilities and vacation or sickness can be a problem. So my hypothesis is that outsourcing might offer stability and expertise, perhaps efficiency.
In order to find out if my assumptions are right, we decided to organize an invitation-only round table, hosted by Treasurer Search and treasuryXL with the content expertise of Milliman. The 12 participants all have leadership roles in large or very large treasuries, managing front offices. We had group treasurers of Dutch listed companies with up to €10 billion revenue stream and directors of risk working with companies even substantially larger.
In our introduction it became quickly clear we had the right group of people to discuss the hypothesis. Relevant and related topics like regulatory affairs, cost savings, relationship with external parties, cybersecurity and also HR effects were discussed. Also, it did not take long to find out that the hypothesis was met with a lot of scepticism. Various reasons were mentioned.
Dmitry and I raised a question and got our answer. Perhaps outsourcing is possible but not appealing. I am just a treasury recruiter with no stake in the business case but for me, some nagging questions remain:
Expertise, stability and efficiency are the results of outsourcing of other functions. Does treasury have such a unique position?
I look forward to your opinion in this, the discussion takes place at the LinkedIn page of treasuryXL.
Thanks for reading!
25-03-2021 | treasuryXL | XE |
Komt uw bedrijf in aanraking met vreemde valuta? Wybe Schutte legt in onderstaand interview uit hoe bedrijven de complexiteit van FX kunnen aanpakken.
Wybe Schutte is Head of Business Development Europe bij Xe. Wybe’s carrière is altijd gericht geweest op internationale bedrijfsontwikkeling en het beheren van relaties. Binnen XE spelen beiden een belangrijke rol, aangezien Xe wereldwijd de vertrouwde partner zijn van veel bedrijven en hun helpen bij het beheren en verminderen van het risico die gepaard gaan met internationaal zakendoen en valuta’s.
Bij Xe draait alles om valuta’s. De meeste mensen kennen Xe van de “Currency Converter”, maar we bieden al meer dan 25 jaar internationale betalingsverkeer diensten aan voor bedrijven. Xe’s Business Solutions ondersteunt bedrijven die in aanraking komen met vreemde valuta door hun te ondersteunen bij het beschermen van de winstmarges, en het verbeteren van de cashflow. Dit onder andere door het valutarisico waarmee ze worden geconfronteerd te kwantificeren en door strategieën te implementeren om dit te beperken. Zodat onze klanten zich kunnen concentreren op hun corebusiness en zich geen zorgen hoeven te maken over hun FX.
Binnen elk bedrijf kijken we waar de valutarisico’s zitten en hoe we deze risico’s kunnen beperken. Waarbij er verschillende opties zijn voor bedrijven om bescherming te bieden tegen het risico, zoals termijncontracten. Valutarisico kan worden onderverdeeld in drie soorten: 1) Transactie risico, wanneer een bedrijf zaken doet in een land dat verschilt van de basisvaluta; 2) Translational risico, wanneer een bedrijf een activa of passiva in een vreemde valuta op de balans heeft staan, en 3) Economisch risico waarbij een verandering in de wisselkoers een bedrijf een concurrentievoordeel kan geven in de markt.
FX-risico kan een negatieve of positieve invloed hebben op de bedrijfsresultaten. Als je terugkijkt op de afgelopen 10 jaar, valt er te zien wat de potentiële impact zou kunnen zijn in de meest extreme, minst extreme en gemiddelde scenario’s op een gegeven tijdlijn.
Dit kan worden gedaan door te kijken naar de hoogte- en dieptepunten van de markt en de valutapositie van een bedrijf. Deze stap helpt bedrijven te begrijpen wat de impact op het bedrijfsresultaat kan zijn.
Bedrijven die een transactionele risico hebben, kunnen een onderscheid maken tussen gecommitteerde of verwachte blootstelling aan valuta risico. Een gecommitteerde blootstelling is wanneer de prijs voor goederen of diensten in een vreemde valuta bekend en gecontracteerd zijn. Hierdoor heeft elke wisselkoersschommeling een directe impact op hun winst of kosten, tenzij ze worden afgedekt. Een verwachte blootstelling is wanneer een bedrijf een inschatting maakt om te zien wat hun vereisten kunnen zijn. De betrouwbaarheidsniveaus in de voorspelde perioden kunnen sterk variëren en het is normaal gesproken zo dat hoe groter de periode, hoe lager de betrouwbaarheidsniveaus.
Er zijn een aantal belangrijke stappen die een bedrijf kan volgen om de FX-volatiliteit te verminderen. De eerste is het type risico te identificeren om daarna de risico-elementen te kwalificeren en vervolgens een strategie te ontwikkelen en deze tijdens het implementatieproces te implementeren. In deze fases kunt u beslissen welke producten het meest geschikt zijn, zodat u vervolgens over kunt gaan op markttiming en uitvoering. Ten slotte moet u uw aanpak regelmatig analyseren, herzien en aanpassen. Het is belangrijk om te onthouden dat het niet om marktspeculatie gaat, maar om het beperken van uw risico.
Gezien de altijd onzekere wereld waarin we momenteel leven, kunnen financiële afdelingen en treasury teams op zoek zijn naar een strategie om met deze valutaschommelingen om te gaan. Een strategie die na verloop van tijd een aanzienlijke invloed kunnen hebben op de bedrijfsresultaten van een bedrijf. Een gestructureerde benadering van valutarisico’s kan een bedrijf in staat stellen om strategische beslissingen te nemen, in plaats van te proberen in te spelen op de dagelijkse ontwikkelingen in de markt.
Er hebben zich aanzienlijke bewegingen voorgedaan op de valutamarkten tijdens de Covid19-periode en er zijn nog steeds veel factoren die de dagkoersen beïnvloeden. In deze onzekere tijden zijn onze opdrachtgevers op zoek naar zekerheid en stabiliteit. En hoewel prijs altijd belangrijk is, werden andere sleutelfactoren zoals veiligheid en geloofwaardigheid belangrijker. Uiteraard was de impact op onze klanten heel verschillend en we hebben met hun samengewerkt om de oplossingen en flexibiliteit te bieden die ze nodig hadden. We hebben veel nieuwe klanten verwelkomd uit nieuwe industrieën terwijl ze groeiden, en we ondersteunen nieuwe en bestaande klanten die groeiden, het lastig hadden, of hun bedrijfsmodellen aanpasten aan de veranderende markt.
We werken nauw samen met onze klanten om hun behoeften continu te begrijpen en hierop aan te passen. Onze deskundige dealers houden de markt nauwlettend in de gaten. Inzicht in de bewegingen, weerstandsniveaus en belangrijke economische en politieke updates die de markt kunnen beïnvloeden zijn erg belangrijk, en we houden die in de gaten zodat onze klanten zich daar geen zorgen over hoeven te maken. Xe werkt ook nauw samen met onze zusterbedrijven en moederbedrijf Euronet Worldwide.
De nabije toekomst zou het hoofd kunnen bieden aan buitengewone niveaus van balansuitbreiding en recessie, wat mogelijk zou kunnen leiden tot een langer stimulerend/ expansief monetair beleid dat op zijn beurt de valutakoersen van de landen die ze dragen, zou kunnen drukken. De gevolgen hiervan op de korte tot middellange termijn zouden een gebrek aan grote economische expansie kunnen zijn, aangezien het kapitaalrendement vaak negatief is wanneer de inflatie wordt meegerekend. Dit kan betekenen dat we een herschikking van de FX-sterkte zien naar op commodity based valuta’s (CAD / AUD / NZD) en alternatieve veilige havens (CHF). We zouden deze verschuiving echter op langere termijn kunnen zien, aangezien met name de overheidsschuld houdbaarder en aantrekkelijker wordt tegen zulke lage rentetarieven en bredere investeringen zou kunnen uitnodigen voor landen en tot op zekere hoogte de particuliere industrie.
We zijn getuige geweest van een grote volatiliteit in de FX-markt door een grotere afhankelijkheid van een smallere data kern. Inflatie en rentetarieven, maar ook verhalen over de overheidsschuld en de uitbreiding van de balans hebben de meeste invloed op de renteschommelingen.
Een scale-up ondersteunen met hun complexe FX-vereisten en hen in staat stellen hun bedrijf in een korte tijd te laten groeien door het FX-risico te elimineren en gaandeweg aanzienlijke kostenbesparingen te realiseren.
Bij XE draait alles om Valuta. We bieden een uitgebreid portfolio van valutadiensten en -producten aan, waaronder onze valutacalculator, marktanalyses, valutagegevens-API en snelle, gemakkelijke en veilig betalingsverkeer voor consumenten en bedrijven.
XE faciliteert wereldwijd meer dan 13.000 bedrijven per jaar bij het beheren van hun vreemde valuta en het vooruit plannen om de risico’s van valutaschommelingen te beperken.
XE is onderdeel van Euronet Worldwide (EWI), een aan Nasdaq genoteerde wereldwijde aanbieder van elektronische en transactie verwerkingsoplossingen met een marktkapitalisatie van ongeveer 7,5 miljard dollar.
Internationale betalingen en beheer van valutarisico’s van ‘s werelds vertrouwde autoriteit op valutagebied. De concurrentie voorblijven is al moeilijk genoeg zonder de complexiteit van vreemde valuta. XE kan u helpen tijd en geld te besparen, zodat u kunt blijven doen waar u goed in bent: uw bedrijf runnen. Onze oplossingen bieden u zekerheid in een onzekere wereld en stellen uw bedrijf in staat om de juiste beslissingen te nemen.
Bezoek XE.com
Lees XE blogs
24-03-2021 | TIS |
The idea that best-of-breed selection, as opposed to a traditional “full stack” TMS, is the way forward gets the TIS “Executive Briefing” treatment in its latest paper. Are treasurers ready to abandon their love of TMS’ and migrate to best-of-breed solutions instead?
Read the Executive Briefing and find out more about:
Leverage the expertise of multiple specialists with seamless API integration and cloud technology.
TIS (Treasury Intelligence Solutions GmbH), founded in Walldorf, Germany in 2010, is a global leader in managing corporate payments. The Financial Times named TIS one of “Europe’s Fastest Growing Companies” in 2019, 2020 and 2021. Offered as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), the TIS solution is a comprehensive, highly-scalable, cloud platform for company-wide payments and cash management. The TIS solution has been successfully used for many years in both large and medium-sized companies, including Adecco Group, Hugo Boss, Fresenius, Fugro, Lanxess, OSRAM and QIAGEN. More than 25% of DAX companies are already TIS customers.
Your world of Payments. ONE Login.
22-03-2021 | treasuryXL | Kyriba | Joe Marcin
Someone recently asked Joe Marcin, “What does Kyriba really do?” he thought about it for a moment and although Kyriba solves some really complex problems for their customers, it really comes down to a pretty simple answer.
At Kyriba, they help some of the world’s most well-known companies, government entities, and financial institutions answer these 5 essential questions:
Enterprise Liquidity Management is transforming the office of the CFO from a cost center to a profit center for customers all over the world. That is why the Kyriba customers trust them to manage TRILLIONS of dollars for them every day.
See some of the success stories here: https://lnkd.in/gp7sZMW
Contact Kyriba directly for more information.
| 17-03-2021 | treasuryXL | Cashforce | TIS
Cashforce & TIS are partnering up to deliver best-of-breed technology. Watch the webinar recording with Nicolas Christiaen and Joerg Wiemer and get to know more about this best-of-breed approach and how this partnership can help you tackle your challenges in cash flow forecasting and corporate payments.
| 16-03-2021 | treasuryXL | Nomentia |
Payment fraud has become a real and permanent threat for companies of all sizes. No company can afford to close their eyes on the risks – fraudsters target all industries, and large and small businesses alike. It is the eleventh hour to start focusing on the safety of your payment process if you want to avoid financial damage.
The good news is that the fraudsters prefer easy targets, so even raising awareness on the topic in your organization is a step in the right direction. With this blog, I want to share 5 concrete tips for preventing payment fraud and improving the safety of your organization’s payment process.
Do you know who has access to your payments at each stage of the process? Risky task combinations may have formed overtime without anyone noticing that a single person can, for instance, create a new payment in the system and approve it to be paid. Overly broad user rights leave unnecessary room for both malpractice and costly mistakes. Applying strong user rights management – the four-eye principle, for example – is a quick way to reduce the risks. You should require double approval also on the changes made in the vendor master data, as well as user rights.
Design a secure payment process with best practices approach. Establishing a “no PO, no pay” principle where invoices are approved for payment only if they have a purchase order number or if they are paid to registered suppliers supports preventing payment fraud. You can improve the safety of manual payments when you utilize the ready-made templates of a payment system and demand multi-factor identification from the person who makes the spontaneous request for payment. Many CFO attacks could have been prevented if the origin of an email payment request had been confirmed via another channel.
You would be surprised if you knew how many companies have gaps in their payment process, creating payment fraud risk. For example, if the payment file batches are waiting to be uploaded to bank in a folder or file share, it leaves the data open for tampering even if the process up to that point had been secure. Eliminating manual phases through automation is one of the best ways to increase safety as it reduces not only the risk of fraud but also the risk of mistakes.
Standardized and harmonized practices build up transparency, which makes spotting and preventing payment fraud easier. Create a uniform, company-wide process for handling payments and make sure that there are no routes round it. By centralizing all your bank connections to a single system, you will take transparency to another level, and, in addition, you are able to better control the risk related to data transfer and system management.
It is not rare that payment fraud is discovered only by accident. As a part of good risk management, you need to focus also on the measures that help you spot the fraudulent payments that manage to go through your defenses. Keep an eye on payments that are going to unknown bank accounts or that are made outside normal payment schedule. Your payment system should support you in risk management and filter out deviations from your payment flows before they are paid. Machine learning and artificial intelligence will soon create new possibilities for recognizing and managing deviations in accounts payable in a more real-time and automated fashion.
Preventing payment fraud in an ever-changing threat landscape requires that you take a comprehensive and proactive approach. I recommend that you download and read our e-book, where we take a look at this topic in detail, and provide you with all the different perspectives a corporate payment process should be examined from. In the e-book, you will find best practices and concrete advice you need to keep your organization from falling victim to payment fraud.
Nomentia is a Nordic powerhouse for global cash management. We believe in a world in which businesses can make the right decisions no matter how unpredictable the times are. Our SaaS-based platform offers solutions for cash forecasting and visibility, global payments with bank connectivity, reconciliation, in-house banking, guarantees, and FX dealing. We serve 2,300+ clients in over 100 countries processing more than 200 billion euros annually. Cash is king!
15-03-2021 | treasuryXL | Kyriba |
For the past 10 years we have lived with an overabundance of liquidity. In most people’s minds, abundant liquidity means constant availability. But the subprime crisis, the European debt crisis and now the COVID pandemic have shown the opposite to be true.
In a world of extreme volatility, liquidity flows can be interrupted overnight. And for financial managers therein lies the paradox. Despite its overabundance, it has never been more crucial to secure, diversify, monitor and optimise liquidity.
In this environment, liquidity is obviously strategic, but above all it must be seen as a volatile and fragile resource, especially vulnerable to market disruptions whose occurrence and scope are unforeseeable by definition as well as by their very nature. The health crisis showed us that nothing is safe from a complete, abrupt halt, not even cash flow from operations, across every sector.
CFOs must now prepare their companies for the unthinkable! They will need to spend more and more time and energy to activate every possible source of liquidity by monitoring prices, availability, term, currencies and security packages for each of these sources. They will do this with a constant focus on optimisation, and above all must be ready to make snap decisions about sources that have run dry. It’s a massive undertaking. In a world of extreme volatility, Active Liquidity Management will make tomorrow’s leaders stand out from the crowd.
Contact Kyriba directly for more information.
11-03-2021 | treasuryXL | XE |
Does your business:
If so, your business can be impacted by exchange rate movements. Whether you’re a sole proprietor or a large corporation, in manufacturing or healthcare, you will face some level of foreign exchange risk when making international payments.
It’s exactly what it sounds like: it’s the possibility that a business’s financial position or performance could be negatively impacted by fluctuations in exchange rates in the foreign currency markets. As the saying goes, the markets never sleep. Exchange rates are prone to fluctuations at any given moment, and while experts can forecast where they think currency values might go, you can’t predict where the rates could go—or what it could mean for your business. Let’s take a look at a few examples.
A falling domestic exchange rate can:
On the other hand, a rising domestic exchange rate can:
Did you notice anything? No matter which direction the exchange rate is moving, it could have the potential to impact your business—and your bottom line.
No one can predict how the markets will move, but a knowledgeable FX provider can give your business the guidance and solutions to help you to make informed decisions to minimize the impact of market motion.
Maurits Houthoff, senior business development manager at XE.com, is always in for a cup of coffee, mail or call to provide you detailed information.
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