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

| 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

 

Five points to consider when choosing your payment system

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

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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 |

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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

 

Lionel Pavey

Cash Management and Treasury Specialist