Treasury Software Archives - Page 42 of 42 - treasuryXL

What is the cloud based system WalletSizing?

13-9-2019 | Vallstein |

What is WalletSizing?

WalletSizing® is a system in the cloud focused on giving full transparency to corporates on their spending and profitability for banks. All their banks globally, regardless of the number of banks and the type of products, varying from Fx, Cash Management, bonds, lending or asset management. Vallstein takes in all data a corporate has available on the products and invoices from the bank in an innovative easy way for the corporate where they do not need to do much with the data. Vallstein translates, maps and upload it into the system after which the corporate has all insight in their banking landscape and can do easy analysis with all the features the system offers.

What distinguishes WalletSizing® from its competitors?

Firstly, WalletSizing® looks at the entire bank relationship, across all product areas, not just transaction services or credit, but everything that is being used from all banks that maintain a relationship with the client concerned. Secondly, Vallstein takes an explicit view through the eyes of the bank on the relationship, taking all relevant Basel III /IV regulation into account. This kind of transparency is absolutely essential to identify the real room to negotiate and ensure terms and conditions that are truly fair for both sides of the table. Thirdly: technology. Vallstein provides analysis for clients maintaining multiple bank relationships across a multitude of countries with many different banking products, which is impossible to build and let alone maintain in spreadsheets.

Who will benefit from using this system?

CFO’s and Treasurers will benefit by having full transparency in the bank relationships and as a result they will have more meaningful bank reviews, RFP’s and Negotiations. Depending on the objectives a corporate has, it will allow them to be fair in their distribution of business towards banks, limit the number of banks used globally or keep banks costs in line with market practice as will be indicated by the system’s benchmarking capabilities. Where cost saving was an objective, corporates saved 26% on their bank costs on average, across the entire relationship, all products.

About Vallstein
Vallstein is the leading provider of Bank Relationship Management (BRM) solutions with a simple mission: no more black box but instead provide the full transparency that enables development of long term sustainable banking relationships.
Founded in 2000, Vallstein has a multinational team of experts dedicated to developing and implementing cutting edge financial technology solutions to help corporations constantly improve their BRM.
Having calculated and analyzed thousands of Wallets over 18 years, Vallstein brings together a unique combination of big data, innovation, analytical capabilities and banking knowledge. This provides the best practice in the optimization of bank relationships.

CASHFORCE AND FIDES WIN GLOBAL FINANCE 2019 TREASURY AND CASH MANAGEMENT AWARD

| 11-04-2019 | treasuryXL | Cashforce |

Cashforce, the global leader in cash forecasting and working capital optimization, and Fides Treasury Services Ltd., the global leader in multi-bank connectivity and communications, have won the Global Finance 2019 Treasury and Cash Management Award for Best Use of Artificial Intelligence in Treasury Management.

The two companies were jointly honored for their efforts to deliver an end-to-end solution that leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to provide better outcomes for corporate treasury and finance departments.

“We are excited to be recognized for the work we have done concerning AI-powered cash forecasting,” said Nicolas Christiaen, CEO of Cashforce. “We will continue to invest in innovation to deliver comprehensive tools that help treasury and financial professionals be more efficient and more effective.”

Partnering together, Fides and Cashforce are pioneering new ways for corporate treasurers to connect to their cash-impacting data and leverage bank and ERP data for success. Fides’ multi-bank connectivity solutions in conjunction with Cashforce’s AI-powered cash forecasting module delivers best-in-class cash flow analytics, helping treasury and finance departments quickly obtain and present a single and accurate version of the truth.

“We are proud to receive this honor from Global Finance,” said Simon Kaufmann, Head, Client Relations and Marketing at Fides. “This award highlights the value of coupling trusted technology with cutting edge innovation, and the value customers can receive through strategic supplier partnerships like that of Fides and Cashforce.”

The Best Use of Artificial Intelligence in Treasury Management was a new award category this year. It was open to submissions from providers of treasury and cash management systems, services and technology that demonstrated innovative problem solving and treasury and cash management best practices.

ABOUT FIDES

Fides is the global leader in multi-bank connectivity and transaction communications. With the industry’s largest bank connectivity network, Fides helps over 3,000 active clients communicate with more than 10,000 banks globally. Our geographic reach spans 170 countries across the Americas, EMEA, and APAC regions.

Committed to helping corporations optimally connect and interact with their banks for over a century, Fides’ solutions deliver critical multi-bank account statement, payment workflow and reporting capabilities that allow treasury and finance teams to easily, accurately and securely communicate with their banks through any possible channel such as SWIFT, EBICS, SFTP or any alternative network.

ABOUT CASHFORCE

Cashforce is the global leader in cash forecasting and working capital optimization, with offices in Antwerp, Amsterdam, Paris, London and New York. We provide cash visibility to multinational corporates across various industries in over 120 countries worldwide.

The Cashforce platform is a ‘next-generation’ cash forecasting and 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 and automated cash flow forecasting and treasury reporting. The platform is unique in its category because of the seamless integration with numerous ERPs and banking systems, the ability to drill down to transaction level details, and the intelligent A.I.-based simulation engine that enables multiple cash flow scenarios, forecasts and impact analysis.

Nicolas Christiaen

Managing Partner at Cashforce

Cash forecasting 2.0

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

TMS Buyer’s Guide from AFP: a short summary

| 1-3-2017 | treasuryXL |

The latest TMS Buyer’s guide of the Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) has been published in 2016, but contains enough interesting information to look at it and make a short summary. With the buyer’s guide AFP wants to offer its members a closer look at treasury technology today. Some of the top TMS vendors in the (global) marketplace were asked to share their view on what treasury departments were looking for in a system—or how such a system should look like. It is a growing market and there are many options to choose from. The questions is, how a treasury professional can judge if the TMS he is considering or currently uses is the one best suited to his needs? According to AFP the TMS Guide will help practitioners to answer that question by giving a list of TMS suppliers and describe the latest technologies and trends. As a treasury professional who also is responsible for a smooth treasury proces within your company you want to be sure that you are getting the most for your money.

The content of the Guide is divided in two parts: a list of TMS suppliers where they describe shortly their products and services and a TMS functionality matrix, which lines out specific TMS functionalities and which company from the list supplies which services or products for the different functionalities.

The list in the guide is one of worldwide suppliers. Most likely AFP has not the intention to offer a complete list and it is obvious that you will find local suppliers in the different markets.

These are the companies in the guide:

ION
Orbit
Axletree
Bellin
Bloomberg
Chatham Financial
Expertus
Financial Sciences Corporation
GTreasury
Hanse Orga Group
Kyriba
OpenLink
Reval
Strategic Treasurer
Treasury Xpress

For our readers we will focus on some companies that operate in the European/Benelux market.

Bellin

Bellin (in the Benelux represented by Enigma) has successfully launched over 15,000 companies on their tm5 Treasury Management system, leading the industry in project success rates. This has given a certain perspective on some of the less thought about aspects of TMS implementation, especially when it comes to cash management. They focus on three factors they think people do not pay enough attention to when implementing their TMS, and how these factors can improve the cash positioning, forecasting and risk management:

Don’t automate, do streamline
Get your subsidiaries involved in cash forecasting early, so you can use their data.
When it comes to risk management, start with real data, and use specific analysis to establish where you have weaknesses

Bellin states that implementing the TMS system is only the beginning and that more challenges come along while you are on the way. Read more.

Kyriba

Kyriba is the global leader in cloud treasury solutions. Kyriba delivers award-winning, secure, modular and scalable SaaS treasury solutions with integrated bank connectivity, payments, and risk management. They developed a cloud treasury management solution that is delivered on a single platform. Kyriba’s Treasury Cloud is used by more than 1,300 clients globally to protect against payments fraud and cybercrime, while proactively managing market volatility, onerous compliance requirements, and creating opportunities to fund new growth. Kyriba’s Cash and Liquidity capabilities include Cash Positioning, Cash Forecasting, Advanced Forecasting, Variance Analysis, Liquidity Forecasting, In-House Banking, and Multi-Lateral Netting. Clients also benefit from full accounting, GL posting, and Bank-tobook reconciliation workflows. The Cash and Liquidity modules are supported by the Kyriba Connectivity Hub and Data Exchange. With Kyriba’s Payment Management suite, clients can initiate, approve and release payments to any of their banks globally. Kyriba also supports payment factories, including multiple routing options to integrate all corporate payment workflows in a centralized payment hub. Read more

Hanse Orga

Hanse Orga is a global provider of specialized financial software for CFOs, treasurers and financial professionals seeking the perfect solution for their individual requirements. Their FS² software family is fully embedded within the SAP landscape so that companies capitalize on existing technology investments and profit from seamless finance processes. Over 1,000 customers in more than 50 countries worldwide have already profited from their systems and consulting.
With their SAP-embedded software family FS² and specialized consulting they help customers worldwide to achieve best results for their finance processes. FS² works with SAP S/4HANA Finance as well as previous SAP systems such as HANA and ECC! Corporates benefit from future-proof functions, a modern user experience and flexible report settings – on any device, anytime and anywhere! Whether the software is installed on premise, in the cloud or as a hybrid solution, the software supports fully audit-proof processes.
FS² is available for these areas: Cash, Liquidity and Treasury Management, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Bank Account Management and Working Capital Management. Read more

Reval

Reval is a global provider of a scalable cloud platform for Treasury and Risk Management (TRM). Their cloud-based offerings enable enterprises to better manage cash, liquidity and financial risk, and to account for and report on complex financial instruments and hedging activities. The scope and timeliness of the data and analytics they provide allow chief financial officers, treasurers and finance managers to operate more confidently in an increasingly complex and volatile global business environment. With offerings built on the Reval CONTACT Cloud Platform companies can optimize treasury and risk management activities across the enterprise for greater operational efficiency, security, control and compliance. They offer Reval Core ™ for mid-market treasuries and Reval Choice™ for organizations faced with
complex treasury and risk challenges. Read more

Treasury matrix in the TMS buyer’s guide

The TMS functionality matrix lists (all) the companies in the guide for the following functionalities:

Foreign Exchange
Debit Interest rate products
Derivatives
Electronic Dealing
Balance & transaction management
Bank account management
Reconciliation
Forecasting
Confirmation
Accounting
Reporting
Security
Target company size
Implementation

For more information on the details of the functionality matrix follow this link.

Source: TMS Buyer’s Guide 2016, AFP

We believe that the functionality matrix offers very valuable information for treasurers and finance professionals who have to make choices for the implementation of a system.

Some other TMS suppliers in Europe/The Benelux not mentioned in the Guide

It goes without saying that in the Benelux/Europe you will find other suppliers, let me mention just a few – Aaron, Integrity, IT2, Trinity (Wieltec), Global$ WallStreet and Treasury Services.

As an example Treasury Services BV creates a competitive advantage for their clients through the implementation of innovative solutions. They offer a complete treasury management software, treasury training and education, financial engineering solutions and consultancy.

Five points to consider when choosing your payment system

| 05-10-2016 | TIS | Sponsored content |

Transparency, reduced risks – and a one million euro saving per year

The payment processes in corporations and internationally active companies are more complex than you might think at first glance – and they are unclear and non-transparent virtually everywhere. This complexity results from the branched company structure and the consequent variety of banking arrangements maintained at central HQ and out in the branch offices and subsidiaries. Various currencies, formats and security keys present an obstacle to unitary, standardized payment processes and an overall view of bank transactions.

Intelligent payment systems in the cloud can remedy this situation: they improve transparency over payment processes, reduce costs and risks and form the basis for better company decision-making. In the typical scenario of an internationally active company they easily contribute annual savings of one million euros.

Download the executive briefing.

Why companies still use Excel

| 25-08-2016 | Lionel Pavey |

Do you still rely on spreadsheets in your daily treasury operations? We have read multiple articles on this subject lately and we decided to ask our community: Why do treasurers still rely on spreadsheets? Yesterday Jan Meulendijks gave us his opinion on the topic. Today expert Lionel Pavey talks about the benefits of using Excel in your company.

Why do companies use Excel?

Cost – it is part of the Microsoft Office Package; low maintenance costs

Use – everyone has some level of proficiency with Excel

Versatile – data can be customized to your own requirements

Simplicity – comes preloaded with over 400 different formulae, though far less than 100 are truly needed for Treasury purposes

Training – most people learn on the job, no need for expensive courses to help people use the software

Flexible – give the same data to different people and see how they uniquely extract the data they need to answer their queries

Compatibility – all relevant data that is present on standalone accounting software etc. can be exported into Excel and adjusted for individual purposes to achieve the desired results

Problems with Excel?

Ignorance – getting staff to comprehend the route from input to output

Errors – not incorporating checks and balances that can highlight discrepancies

Individualism – is the output only for your consumption or is it passed on down through the chain, enhanced and then passed on again?

Disarray – everyone applies different fonts, layouts, conditional formatting. Should be a company policy in place to determine how data is collated and presented

Uncertainty – why do people insist on hiding columns and rows?

Duplication – the same spreadsheet data is present on many PC’s at the same time with subtle but significant differences. Someone has to own the original document

Solutions?

Dedicated BI software – expensive, no value outside of the present company normally, requires regular maintenance, multiple departments have to sign off before it can even be implemented, constant reviews of whether the correct modules are present, system updates

Design Structure – implement a company policy clearly dictating how “shared” spreadsheets are to be designed.

Input Structure – agree who delivers what, to whom, when and in the agreed format

Share results – allow other people to see how their data has been incorporated into the final reports so they can appreciate the significance of their contribution

Ownership – define who owns what part of the process (their level of responsibility) and who owns the spreadsheet

Reports – ensure that the end users clearly define what they require at the start. 10 versions of a spreadsheet before they get what they wanted means they did not know what they wanted or did not communicate clearly

Conclusion

Excel is well known, robust, versatile and understood. For cash flow forecasting 4 or 5 secure “master” spreadsheets can allow for most situations – daily cash flow recording, future cash flow forecasting, agreed budget, capital expenditure plans, funding commitments. These have to be well protected and isolated on the hard drive. Everything is a trade off – nothing will give you 100 per cent accuracy. However, if you can relatively simply design the required spreadsheets then data is always up to date and available when needed. This covers the 80 per cent of the time maxim– the other 20 per cent you will have to work harder to achieve. Excel is not going away – every new versions even more functionality that allows us to achieve the required level of input more easily whilst ensuring that the output can be better analysed and interpreted.

Lionel Pavey

Cash Management and Treasury Specialist