Cashforce and smart cash forecasting

| 03-04-2018 | treasuryXL | Cashforce |

As stated in our last blog, on Tuesday 27th March 2018, treasuryXL attended a seminar in Amsterdam organised by TIS about optimizing cash flow. The last speaker at this event was Nicolas Christiaen, mananging partner at Cashforce. They are a fintech leader in Cash forecasting & Treasury solutions for corporates. They took the opportunity to explain to all the attendees what their product is and how it works. In this article we shall attempt to provide an insight into what we learnt.

Cashforce focuses on automation and integration within cash forecasting and treasury management systems. They connect the Treasury department with other departments within a business – offering full transparency into the cash flow drivers, resulting in accurate and efficient cash flow forecasting. They also offer a flexible forecasting method which we shall explain later.

Forecasting is a subject that can cause irritation within a company. It requires different departments to collaborate on a regular basis and provide consistent information which needs to grouped together to present a complete overview of the expected cash movements for the agreed time period. This input encompasses accounts payable, accounts receivable, procurement, projects, HR, treasury etc. All this information needs to be presented in a consistent format so that everything can be aggregated. Problems arise when data is not delivered, or delivered too late, or inaccurate.

The solution would appear to be a single method to extract all the relevant data from all the relevant databases and systems and to have this incorporated together with the correct running opening bank balances.

Cashforce have developed a platform that links into all the aforementioned databases and uses the agreed metrics within the different departments to arrive at a forecast. This leads to an integrated platform driven by your own systems. As the data parameters have been mapped and agreed beforehand, this means that it is possible to drill down to a very granular level to predetermined transaction details. This means you can go from the comprehensive level to overview per account, per client, per accounting group as the original chart of accounts has been embedded into the platform.

Included with the platform is a special functionality that takes into account the actual dispersal from a particular client and allows you to see how they actually performed as opposed to their agreed performance. These metrics can then also be used to adjust the forecast to the past behaviour of all component parts from the chart of accounts, enabling a forecast to be presented that reflects the actual results from the past.

It becomes possible to drill down on every single aspect with the forecast and interrogate an individual item. Furthermore, it is possible to make adjustments to the forecast and see the results, whilst also giving a data trail showing what changes were made and by whom. The ability to review different scenarios, whilst still retaining the original data, makes this solution unique from the standard cash forecasting systems.

This can lead to greater understanding of the drivers within a company’s cash, good visibility of the behaviour of an individual counterparty, more accurate ability to determine when additional funds are needed, together with the potential to map the effects of changing individual items and seeing their outcome to the complete forecast.

In conclusion, this is an original solution to an age old problem for cash management.

treasuryXL would like to thank Cashforce for illustrating their solution at this seminar. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.

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TIS – the single source of truth

| 29-03-2018 | treasuryXL | TIS Treasury Intelligence Solutions |

On Tuesday 27th March 2018, treasuryXL attended a seminar in Amsterdam organised by TIS. TIS stands for Treasury Intelligence Solutions and, during this seminar, Christian Werling from TIS  gave a very informative presentation about their services which focus on cloud solutions for managing the administration of bank accounts. These solutions offer real-time reporting on all bank accounts – worldwide – and the ability to use just one system to validate and release all payments. In a world where a treasury department might hold more than 100 bank accounts, dispersed over more than 10 banks spread out across different time zones  and having to maintain the possession and custody of numerous bank tokens and log in protocols, a one stop solution is very enticing.

Why?

In today’s world, companies can find themselves with a physical presence in a multitude of countries and locations. In the current environment, a corporate treasury would need to log on to the website of every unique bank where they hold accounts and extract the bank statements for the previous day. Using separate bank tokens and log in protocols, this process can quite easily take up to 1 hour. Furthermore, all the separate data needs to be collated and then uploaded into 1 system, Various subsets of the information need to be given to different internal departments so that they can perform their daily tasks – reconciliation, data input and verification.

The reality

In the modern age, you could find yourself as a Treasurer, within a large complex organisation, consisting of a head office, subsidiaries, legal entities and shared service centres. The underlying platforms can consist of book keeping systems, ERP, HR and different databases. Additional data flows come from e-banking systems, TMS and stand alone projects. The output from all these systems are then used to connect to the banks. Furthermore, all these layers of connectivity can be subject to fraud or attack from outside sources.

TIS provides a single point of contact via a SaaS (Software as a Service) platform that connects to all these systems, thereby offering a simple and effective control over the data flows in real time.

Advantages

  • Real time information
  • Control from a single point
  • Centralised bank account management
  • Centralised bank account mandates
  • Transparency
  • Cost efficiencies

After this we were informed about how the system works in the real world. Bas Coolen is the global head of treasury at Archroma – a colour and speciality chemicals company based in Switzerland. They have a physical presence in over 35 countries and 3,000 employees. Formed 5 years ago, they wanted a minimal  IT solution to their legacy banking operations. These operations stretch from Asia, via Europe to the Americas and involved many different banks.  They concluded that no single bank could provide the service they required within every country and that they needed a solution. By adopting the platform offered by TIS, they have been able to implement a global system that encompasses all their bank accounts – this provides them with a single source of truth. Importantly, the security aspects can now be maintained from one source – all the relevant authorisation matrices are now contained in one platform, along with the capability to perform all global e-banking operations from one location.

TIS were joined at this seminar by Cashforce, who presented their Smart Cash Forecasting and Treasury system – that will be the topic of our next blog.

treasuryXL would like to thank TIS for allowing us to participate in this seminar. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.

 

How To Optimize Your Cash Management – upcoming event

| 19-03-2018 | treasuryXL | TIS Treasury Intelligence Solutions |

Treasury Intelligence Solutions GmbH (TIS)- a partner of treasuryXL, are organising a very engaging event that is being held in Amsterdam on Tuesday 27th March 2018, for corporate treasury. We have been kindly invited to attend and shall report back to you later, with our thoughts and experiences on what promises to be an interest evening. Read on for more information about this event and sign up if you find this event relevant to you and your company.

TIS will be joined by Cashforce, at the TIS Experts Evening in Amsterdam. The main focus will be on TIS client Archroma and their presentation on the global implementation of TIS.

TIS is the leading cloud platform for the management of company-wide payments and cash flows. TIS enables companies to make more efficient, more secure and more cost-effective payment transactions while also enabling customers to make better decisions when analysing financial and operational performance in real time.

Bas Coolen, Head of Treasury at Archroma, will present challenges in his department and his key objectives for a consolidation of bank account management and an optimization of payments.

Archroma is a global colour and specialty chemicals company headquartered in Reinach near Basel, Switzerland. It operates with 3,000 employees over 35 countries and with 24 production sites.

Cashforce will inform you about the art of automating your cash forecast with minimal effort.

TIS and Cashforce are very much looking forward to stimulating discussions and ideas with their comprehensive agenda and lectures. Reports on trends, achievements and real-world examples from the industry will round up the program for this evening.
During the networking section you will have the opportunity to further exchange with Bas Coolen and the experts from Cashforce and TIS. You can take this opportunity to ask your questions about how to operate an elaborate cash management system, that offers the functionality you require.

The event is being held in the Dylan Hotel, built on the site of a famous theatre – so we can expect a good performance.

Register now for one of the last remaining seats via the following link: Expert evening Amsterdam

treasuryXL wishes everyone – both participants and attendees – a productive evening and will report back later with our findings.

From dull numbers to smart data: A new era of cash visibility is dawning

| 06-03-2018 | TIPCO | Sponsored content |

Building on information that is now more readily available than ever before, advances in technology help create new insights for corporate treasurers. 

 

 

For the last decade or so, many treasury departments have focused on getting their hands on the data required for establishing daily, or at least weekly, visibility of group-wide cash. Countless projects have revolved around collecting electronic bank balance data – think MT940 and others – and considerable time and resources have been invested in automating and speeding-up data retrieval from TMS, ERP, trading platforms and other source systems.

After all, besides bank balances, data on bank and IC loans and deposits, intercompany clearing accounts and other financial positions needed to be incorporated as well to allow for a realistic assessment of the group’s financial status and available headroom. However, reporting based on these data has remained a painful exercise for most treasury teams as it typically involved exporting information from various, isolated data silos to numerous spreadsheets containing a plethora of handcrafted reports. The result: the number of hours spent on consolidating data, updating reports and correcting errors often reached double-digits, on a weekly basis.

The first step: compiling information

In recent years, the provision of relevant data has become much more automated and common place since the goal of having electronic account statements of all bank accounts world-wide centrally available was high on the priority list of many corporates. Very often, this was part of a larger effort to streamline and centralise cash management and payments. In many cases, a TMS was introduced to replace Excel spreadsheets and the treasury modules of popular ERP suites started to offer more sophisticated features, providing corporates with a preference for all-in-one solutions with a viable alternative to a standalone TMS. A mix of tried-and-tested, file-based connectors and more sophisticated web-services allowed for even speedier data interchange between source systems such as TMS, ERP or trading platforms. And any data not centrally available to the treasury department was collected from subsidiaries – facilitated in the best case by easy-to-use, web-based applications. With this kind of information basis established, dedicated treasury reporting solutions were leveraged to achieve close to 100% visibility of cash. At the same time, the rise in business intelligence software allowed end users to easily retrieve data without having to resort to spreadsheets and accessing reports online or even via smart devices became the norm rather than the exception.

The next step: Turning information into insight

For many corporates, these steps were already a big leap forward. But what next, now that all the integration challenges have been mastered and information is readily available? Of course, the ‘data puddles’ turned ‘data pools’ mentioned above can be used for plain and simple financial status reporting. But, given that it is 2018 and self-driving cars will soon hit the road in California: should that really be it? For us, the answer is a clear ‘no’. Today, treasurers have access to a whole new range of applications which make use of information that is now more readily available than ever, and which leverage recent advances in technology such as artificial intelligence to provide value-added services to treasury depart-ments. While we are very careful when talking about ‘revolutions’ in treasury, the advances we want to highlight below surely are a noteworthy evolution. Until recently, data analysis in treasury was still very much a manual task. This no longer needs to be the case as smart tools greatly reduce the time needed for performing even in-depth data analyses, thus allowing more time to be spent on acting on the results of such analyses. Let us take you on a quick ‘tour d’horizon’ using five examples of how smart applications can take your cash visibility to the next level:

1. Policy checks
In a typical treasury policy, one finds numerous rules and regulations relating to the opening of new bank accounts, the maximum allowed number of these accounts, acceptable account purposes, etc. Why not replace email-based processes for new bank account requests with intelligent workflows that not only ensure an end-to-end audit trail, but which also ensure that new bank accounts are automatically fed into all relevant systems such as ERPs, TMS or reporting tools once finally approved.

2. Compliance controls
Combined with smart request workflows as described above, regular, system-supported compliance checks further enhance group treasury’s grip on what is going on around the group. Whether these checks relate to the number, currency or counterparty of bank accounts or other financial positions, or the timeliness of data on authorised signatories in the system, outliers can easily be identified, and compliance can be swiftly restored.

3. Fraud detection
When electronic account statements are merely used as a means of importing end-of-day balances, much of their potential is lost. Based on smart search patterns, data provided as part of the remittance information can be used for valuable insights: Where in the group do frequent cash-based transactions occur? Banks’ business transaction codes (BTCs) or other related text snippets can point you in the right direction and responsible, local or regional finance staff can be notified automatically, using workflow-based notification processes so the background and soundness of such cash movements can be checked.

4. Performance KPIs
KPIs as a means of systematically measuring treasury performance are high on the agenda of many of the more advanced treasury departments out there. Whether they relate to the efficiency of core treasury processes (think request and approval workflows once again) or to other indicators such as the overall number of bank accounts, the percentage of accounts included in cash pooling arrangements, the share of trapped cash in overall cash – to name only a few basic KPIs: a well-compiled set of such figures that covers not only cash management but other areas as well – presented in the form of a clearly laid out KPI dashboard, finally provides the treasurer with a strategic steering wheel.

5. Bank fee controlling
You wonder what bank fee controlling has to do with cash visibility. The short answer: everything. Regular, system-supported bank fee analysis is not only about penny pinching but equally about developing an in-depth understanding of what is going on further up the process chain. A strikingly high number of fax payments in a country where you wouldn’t expect them? Fees titled ‘Others’ which amount to thousands of euros every month? If nowhere else, then you’ll find this information in the electronic fee statements (e.g. camt.086) provided by your bank. A smart analysis tool allows you to interactively drill down from cruising altitude to the line item level and within minutes you can reach out to either your bank’s customer service, your subsidiary or both to clarify what’s going on.

If you would like to know more and find out how technology can help you go one step beyond cash visibility and ease your daily life as a treasurer, get in touch with us. We are looking forward to helping you unleash your data’s full potential.

TIPCO Treasury & Technology GmbH

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Cashforce raises €2 Million to accelerate international rollout

| 27-02-2018 | Nicolas Christiaen | Cashforce | sponsored content |

Cashforce, a fintech leader in Cash forecasting & Treasury solutions for corporates, announced today that it has closed € 2 million in Series A financing. The internal funding round was led by Volta Ventures and Michel Akkermans (Pamica NV), reinforcing their previous commitment to the company. The Series A financing enables Cashforce to accelerate the ongoing international roll-out and fuels its rapid global growth and industry leadership as a premier provider of Cash forecasting & Treasury solutions. Organisationally, staff will be expanded, and operations will be scaled up – with a significant number of new hires in 2018. Product-wise the company is working on developments that will enable even more insights and potential savings for its clients. Commercially, supporting and growing the customer base and increasing customer success and adoption as well as continuing to build strategic partnerships and alliances are part of the strategic plan.

“Cash management & Treasury is evolving from a focus on data acquisition to Treasury automation and data analysis, enabling Treasury departments to bridge the gap between the Finance and other operational departments and enable data-driven strategic decision making. On top of that, Cash flow forecasting has become the major focus of the industry.”, said Nicolas Christiaen, CEO and co-founder of Cashforce. “This investment also re-confirms our investors’ confidence in the leadership that Cashforce has established in the Treasury space, our continued rapid growth and the potential to re-define the category.”

Additionally, Cashforce announced that Michel Akkermans will become Chairman of the board. Michel Akkermans is a serial entrepreneur in fintech companies. Amongst others, he was the Chairman and CEO of successful companies such as FICS and Clear2Pay. After the global payment solution company Clear2Pay was acquired by FIS in 2014, he became an active investor and board member in several companies and private equity organisations, as well as a venture partner and Chairman of Volta Ventures.

Cashforce: The Leading Cash forecasting platform for the Modern Corporate

Cashforce is a next-generation Cash forecasting & Smart Treasury Management System, focused on automation and integration for corporates. It helps corporate finance/treasury departments save time and money by offering accurate cash flow forecasting, pro-active working capital management analysis as well as flexible Treasury reporting & automation.

Cashforce is unique because it offers full transparency into what exactly drives the cash flow of mid-size & large corporates with different complexities such as multi-entity, multi-bank, multi-currency and complex ERP(s). Smart algorithms are applied to generate highly accurate Cash forecasts. The intelligent simulation engine enables companies to consider multiple scenarios and measure their impact. Its intuitive user interface allows for extensive and tailor-made analysis & reporting possibilities. Unlike other enterprise software players, the platform is set up quickly, even in the most complex environments, and connecting seamlessly with any ERP system through its ‘plug-and-play’ connectors. As a result, finance/treasury departments can be turned into business catalysts for cash generation opportunities throughout the company.

“While we started off as a Cash forecasting tool, we have added Advanced Working Capital analytics and Smart Treasury functionalities, and are now operative as a comprehensive modular Treasury Management System (TMS). This makes Cashforce a one-stop-shop for the many analytical and operational practices that benefit Financial and Treasury departments,” says Nicolas Christiaen, CEO of Cashforce. “The endorsement we get from both industry experts and clients progressively confirms that our solution really does bring change into the Treasury market. We now see that potential customers compare the classical TMS providers to Cashforce with Cashforce ending up as the preferred solution! Then you know you’re on the right track. We therefore strive to continue our vision to further integrate and automate to provide our customers with an even more effortless experience.”

“Cashforce has brought a very compelling solution to the corporate Cash management market, which is clearly seen in its results. Since its last financial injection in early 2016, Cashforce has demonstrated a rapid growth, including well over 100% annually recurring revenue growth”, explains Michel Akkermans, the company’s recently appointed chairman.
“With a surge in employees to over 25, an increasing and global interest from the market and partnerships with leading corporate banks, private equity firms & Treasury consultants, Cashforce has been expanding both reach and product. We have heard back from multiple existing customers about their positive experiences with the solution and its impact on their business, and they strongly believe in its trajectory moving forward”.

“Cashforce set foot in the Netherlands this year and has been growing substantially, proving that the company can be scaled up relatively easy,” says Nicolas Christiaen. “This would not be the case without the help of Volta Ventures and Michel Akkermans, who not only provided funding, but also lent their vast strategic experience in our market. The plans for Western-Europe as well as the US are outlined, and this funding round will be valuable to accelerate the international roll-out.”

About Cashforce (www.cashforce.com)
Cashforce is a ‘next-generation’ Cash forecasting & Smart Treasury platform, focused on integration and automation. With its technology, Cashforce is helping Treasury departments from large capital-intensive businesses save time and money by offering cash visibility & pro-active cash saving insights. The platform is easy to use and install, and connects seamlessly with any ERP system. Cashforce is headquartered in Belgium with an office in Amsterdam and New York, serving customers globally such as TomTom, Hyundai and Greenyard among many others worldwide.

About Pamica (www.pamica.be)
Pamica is the investment company of Michel Akkermans.

About Volta Ventures (www.volta.ventures)
Volta Ventures Arkiv invests in young and ambitious internet and software companies in the Benelux. The fund has € 55 million under management and is supported by EIF and ARKimedesFund II.

Press Contact Information
Nicolas Christiaen – [email protected] – +32 479 65 52 95
Michel Akkermans (Pamica NV) – [email protected] – +32 3 202 40 30

 

Bank fee monitoring – more than just “penny pinching”

| 06-02-2018 | TIPCO | Sponsored content |

The electronic analysis of bank fees not only cuts costs but also helps to sustainably improve the quality of treasury processes.
Monitoring bank fees is not a task which is particularly popular in treasury departments. The idea of working through stacks of paper in the hope of understanding confusing bank fee nomenclature doesn’t usually generate much enthusiasm. This onerous task is often delegated, or statements are just blindly signed off on by the accounts department. That’s a shame. Why? Because the systematic analysis of bank fees can not only save considerable sums of money but can also lead to real improvements in treasury processes.

Evil intentions are not the only reason behind incorrectly charged items. Banks claim that updates of their fee calculation systems are sometimes responsible for standard fees being charged rather than those which have been specially negotiated with certain clients. Simply on the grounds of human error, there is a need to regularly check whether agreed fees are always taken into account by the software that banks use.

What do you need to do to retain an overview?

First of all, you need a bank which is capable of providing you with electronic statements in either the TWIST BSB or camt.086 formats. The gentle pressure that major corporates have put on their banks in recent years has paid off. Banks are increasingly responding positively to relevant customer requests. We will be happy to provide a list of those banks which can already provide these statements and in which countries.

On the other hand, your systems need to be able to read and process these formats. While you can open the statements relatively easily in Excel, special system support is necessary in order to perform in-depth analyses. Many corporates use web-based and TMS-independent platforms for this which have specially developed to monitor bank fees. Bespoke interfaces guarantee integration into your existing system landscape. A good example of such a system is the treasury information platform TIP, which is already in use at corporates such as Deutsche Post DHL Group or Lufthansa.

How will you benefit from regular checks?

The first benefit comes from checking that agreed fees are actually charged in practice. The press of a button is all it should take to highlight all discrepancies and provide a basis for demanding reimbursement from the bank. But this is just the beginning. Once transparency has been established about the services and fees charged, it doesn’t take long to draw conclusions about suboptimal payment processes. For example, if your analysis frequently highlights expensive “non-STP” or “repair” fees, you would be well advised to take a closer look at your payment processes. Perhaps there is simply a need to update incorrect master data. On the other hand, it might be necessary to brief your personnel on correct payment processes.

A further example: document-based payment methods. If your Canadian subsidiary in-structs a bank by fax to perform 800 transfers a month, this is not only a problem for your internal audit team but generally also extremely expensive. Here is another case relevant in the context of compliance which can be highlighted by bank fee monitoring: Cash withdrawals from company accounts at a bank branch may be above board in certain cases but should certainly be queried.

Another positive side effect of a transparent overview of bank fees is a comparison between different subsidiaries: Do all your subsidiaries in a particular country pay the same fee for the same service, and if not, why not?

Another situation: Imagine that you asked the general manager of your Spanish subsidiary three months ago to close two unnecessary EUR accounts, but the account management fee keep appearing on the statements. Electronic statements can therefore help you to insist on compliance with your cash management policy.

However, this issue is not only suitable as a means of slapping the wrists of banks and in-ternal troublemakers. The systematic processing of bank statements also provides you with exactly the data you need for your next payment service RFP: The relevant products you use and volumes are presented on a silver platter; meaning that you don’t need to painstakingly collect these data from your subsidiaries. Besides the quantitative factors, the analysis of bank fees also provides you with a better impression of the quality of the services provided by your banks. Armed with these data, you are far better prepared for bank negotiations.

What will the future bring?

What might still sound far-fetched today may soon become reality: Work is already ongoing in some pilot projects to directly book fee-based information from electronic account statements in ERP systems. This is based on statements prepared using the ZUGFeRD format, a standard developed by the Forum for Electronic Invoicing Germany (FeRD), which will make it possible to send invoices in a defined PDF format which can then be automatically read and processed.

Parallel to this, the German Association of Corporate Treasurers (vdt) has formed a working group to establish an XML format proposal which meets the minimum requirements necessary for bank fees to be VAT deductible. And, in the near future, electronic statements may also include all of the key elements of banks’ year-end summaries.

Efforts to introduce electronic bank fee statements are also being intensified internationally: The Common Global Implementation (CGI) initiative, investigating the standardisation of payment formats, has set up a working group to further develop camt.086, the ISO standard for cash management statements. Numerous other initiatives in Germany, Austria and France are also regularly bringing banks, corporates and system providers together for meetings. Increasing numbers of medium and large corporates are starting relevant projects and sharing their experiences at fairs such as those of the Association of Financial Profes-sionals (AFP) in Denver and at the Finance Symposium organised by Schwabe, Ley & Greiner. This issue is also being addressed in academia, highlighted by the numerous dis-sertations and theses focussing on how theory and practice should be combined. Last but not least, system providers are increasingly integrating bank fee monitoring into their solutions.

How can you help?

Rising demand from corporates is ensuring that this issue remains firmly at the top of credit institution agendas. While banks of course are keen to pass on the necessary investment costs to their customers, don’t let yourself get caught up in any discussions on this issue. After all, you don’t pay other suppliers to send you electronic invoices that you can understand.

TIPCO Treasury & Technology GmbH

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Cash forecasting: A data story

| 17-01-2018 | Cashforce |

Have you ever heard the dogma that people only use 10% of their brain capacity? Fortunately, this statement is a myth, but a similar (and more truthful) argument can be made for data usage. Using the example of an oil rig, a 2015 McKinsey & Company report states that an organisation typically uses less than 1% of the collected data to make decisions. While intuitively not all data will be useful to include in the decision-making process, it’s fair to say that there is a huge untapped potential.

From advanced retargeting in the marketing world to tailored music suggestions on Spotify, data has been in an uplift, opening doors in almost every field. Corporate finance & treasury is sitting pretty as well: amongst other areas, integrating relevant data into your forecasting model can facilitate substantial improvements in the quality of your cash flow predictions.

In this exuberant amount of data, it’s important to distinguish internal from external data.

Internal corporate data

Put simply, the bulk of data involved in cash projections will be found internally. Standard forecasting models, mostly build in spreadsheets, often make use of a small part of these data. Both account balances grabbed from banking portals and user generated input contribute to fulfil the daily, weekly or monthly cash forecast. User generated data may contain sales budget & forecast, average incoming & outgoing cash flows, projected dividends, CAPEX investments, etc. This information is necessary however typically lacks accuracy.

When making smart use of additional internal business data, most of these estimates can be derived from other internal data that may lead to a higher degree of forecast accuracy and a maintainable forecasting model. Such internal data sources are numerous and contain information on sales & purchase orders, quotations from your CRM system, production planning & all kind of recurring activities that carry relevant information on your future cash flows. Additionally, treasury data can automatically be included as well, enabling your treasury department to be multiple steps ahead instead of running behind daily facts.

To maximize the potential of your internal (big) data, algorithms and calculations need to be added to the forecasting model. By incorporating customer payment behaviour, seasonality patterns, correlations between different types of cash flows… your predictions can easily benefit from fine-tuning of these basic parameters. Re-evaluating those assumptions can by looking at meaningful patterns that are present in the data, can help to make a smarter and more tailored forecast. As an example, by carefully looking at past payment periods, future payments for each customer can be estimated with a high degree of precision.

 External data

Finally, integrating external data in your forecasting model will typically not affect cash the forecast in the short-term. It can however be relevant for long-term cash projections and fine-tuning. Market sentiment and macro economical indices will be most useful here, as well as all ticker information on treasury & commodity futures.

After capturing all this data, it’s key to consolidate everything from several (usually incompatible) operational systems. Note that not only the amount of data and diversity of data sources are important, but the accuracy of input and up-to-date information as well.

Consequentially, through extensive modelling and analysis, an effective and accurate cash flow forecast can be created. For this you would need software that can handle advanced big data analytics in order to convey pattern recognition and forecasting. The lion’s share of prevailing software doesn’t have the necessary integration possibilities and processing power to efficiently effectuate these kind of complex consolidation and analyses. Fortunately, some are built with this data requirements in mind and do have these capabilities. These make room for generating a significantly better cash forecast.

The world of business is going through rapid advancement in this age of technology, and the financial discipline is not spared in this phenomenon. While this data story unfolds, the time has come to put your “corporate brain-capacity” to use.  Will you let this wealth of data create an unseen amount of value?

If you want to find out more about Cashforce and their services and products please refer to their company profile on treasuryXL.

 

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

 

TIS (Treasury Intelligence Solutions) at the DACT Treasury Fair

| 22-11-2017 | treasuryXL | TIS Treasury Intelligence Solutions |

The DACT (Dutch association of Corporate Treasurers) will be holding their annual Treasury Fair in Noordwijk at the Hotel van Orange on 23rd and 24th November 2017 – the most important annual treasury event in the Netherlands. Discover treasury best practices, learn about the latest trends and exchange experiences. It will contain 9 practical workshops spread out throughout the day on topics including, among others, trade finance, supply chain finance, liquidity forecasting, cyber security and the Blockchain. There are more than 50 exhibitors present at the Trade Fair including Treasury Intelligence Solutions GmbH- a partner of treasuryXL.

Company Profile

TIS is the leading cloud platform for managing corporate payments, liquidity and banking relationships worldwide. The company delivers SMART PAYMENTS to help customers make BETTER DECISIONS. TIS enable companies to make more efficient, more secure and more cost-effective payment transactions. In addition, TIS enables customers to make better decisions when analysing financial and operational performance based on real-time payment flows. All mission-critical processes related to payment transactions are integrated into a multibank-capable, audit-proof cloud platform. This is a single point of contact for enterprise customers when managing and analysing their payment flows across the organisation. TIS take care of managing various payment formats, communication channels with banks, and ERP-agnostic integration. Offered as Software as a Service (SaaS), the ISO certified TIS solutions are quickly up and running without the complexity and cost of a long IT project.

If you are at the Treasury Fair, please take your time to visit their stand and mention treasuryXL.

Last week TIS raised $12 million in additional financing from international VC firm 83North. Read more on their website

This is TIS’s own announcement on their website announcing their participation.

We wish TIS success at the DACT Treasury Fair!!

If you want to find out more about TIS and their services and products please refer to their company profile on treasuryXL.

Treasury Services at the DACT Treasury Fair

| 20-11-2017 | treasuryXL | Treasury Services |

The DACT (Dutch association of Corporate Treasurers) will be holding their annual Treasury Fair in Noordwijk at the Hotel van Orange on 23rd and 24th November 2017 – the most important annual treasury event in the Netherlands. Discover treasury best practices, learn about the latest trends and exchange experiences. It will contain 9 practical workshops spread out throughout the day on topics including, among others, trade finance, supply chain finance, liquidity forecasting, cyber security and the Blockchain. There are more than 50 exhibitors present at the Trade Fair including Treasury Services- a partner of treasuryXL.

Company Profile

Treasury Services structurally improves the bottom line of its clients by cutting their costs and by improving their efficiency in finance. We create a competitive advantage for our clients by implementing innovative solutions. Treasury Services offers Treasury Consultancy & Advice, Treasury Management Software, Treasury Training & Education and Financial Engineering Solutions. With these building blocks we can create complete solutions in Treasury Management, Cash Management, Risk Management, Corporate Finance and Treasury Control. Treasury Services has an international portfolio of corporates, financial institutions and non-profit organisations as clients.

Treasury Services recently strengthened its FX Risk Management Advisory services by entering into a partnership with Rob Beemster of Barcelona Currency Experts. (See Press release). Rob will also be present personally during the DACT Treasury Fair.

For the DACT Treasury Fair we have developed an FX Quick Scan which gives interested companies an immediate insight into their FX situation. As a result of this “few minutes” survey, companies can decide to make an appointment with Treasury Services for a more in-depth discussion / analysis of the FX situation of their company. Read more on their website.

If you are at the Treasury Fair, please take your time to visit their stand and mention treasuryXL.

We wish Treasury Services success at the DACT Treasury Fair!!

If you want to find out more about Treasury Services and their services and products please refer to their company profile on treasuryXL.