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Do Androids dream of Electric Spreadsheets? A Beginner’s Guide to AI in Treasury – Part I

| 24-02-2020 | treasuryXL | Cashforce |

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick, adapted to the movie Blade Runner in 1984 (yes, it’s that old), ponders the question whether technology can replace humanity in every aspect of life. Whether advanced technology could attain a comprehensive cognitive interpretation of dreaming is a philosophical conundrum that I’ll leave for the brightest among us. However, while this doomsday scenario in Hollywood movies in which robots rise against their human creators is far from happening, the reality is that a computer has already surpassed the level of strategic thinking of a human being. This rise of artificial intelligence carries the potential to disrupt any industry, including treasury, but often leaves you wondering if the hype lives up to reality.

[Spoiler alert] In the dystopian world of Blade Runner, the protagonist called Deckard, a bounty hunter or “blade runner” hunts outlawed androids or “replicants” while feeling no remorse due to them being machines. An interpretation endorsed by the iconic unicorn dream sequence hints that his human memories might have been artificially implanted, implying he might be an android himself. Is this the course artificial intelligence will eventually take us to?

Man vs. Machine – A Boardgame Evolution

In 1997 IBM’s computer Deep Blue beat Gary Kasparov, the world champion at that time, in a game of chess. Deep Blue was able to analyze thousands of high-level chess games that were stacked into its system. When proposed with a move, it would choose the best outcome out of different scenarios. By basic number-crunching it was picking out the move that would lead to the best position on the board. This milestone was heralded as a boon for technology and viewed as almost exclusively disruptive for many industries.

Go, an abstract strategy board game invented in China, has simpler rules than chess, but many more moves at each point in the game. Just to give you an idea, the size of possible outcomes is larger than the number of atoms in the universe. Looking too far ahead in the game, or considering all possible moves and counter-moves is therefore nearly impossible. In 2016, distinguished Go player Lee Sedol was put up for the task to beat the next high-tech invention, named AlphaGo. Created by the sharp minds at Google’s DeepMind, its intelligence is based on its ability to learn from millions of Go positions and moves from previous games. Once again, machine triumphed over its human equivalent when it came to strategic thinking.

AlphaZero, released in 2017, is a version of the same program that takes it a step further. It can play chess, Go and other games and is only given the rules of the game, nothing more. By playing millions of games against itself without any previous knowledge of plays, tactics or strategy, it was able to master these games on its own. So how much time went by from the moment they launched AlphaZero to the moment where it achieved a superhuman level of playing Go? Less than 24 hours. Even more baffling is, while humans have been playing it for the past 2500 years, it came up with brand-new strategies that have never been seen before. While it is ‘only’ about fun and games, this sheds a new light on technological concepts that seemed at first like far-out fiction.

Artificial intelligence systems can dazzle us with their game-playing skills and lately it seems like every week there is a baffling breakthrough in the field with mind blowing results. It is almost unthinkable that the finance sector would be untouched by the rise of AI, any sector for that matter. Nonetheless, with the present hype around it, many of the used concepts and terminology seem to be used carelessly, which makes it hollowed and deprived of any meaning. You have probably heard of the terms “machine learning” and “deep learning”, sometimes used interchangeably with artificial intelligence. As a result, the difference between these concepts becomes very unclear. To understand this distinction and why AI will disrupt current technologies, we have to understand where it comes from.

Let there be l(A)ight – A brief History

Simply put, AI involves machines that can perform tasks that are similar to human tasks. A very broad definition which can go from simple solutions such as automated bank tellers to powerful and complex applications such as androids, which inspired the movie Blade Runner.

Surprisingly, the script on AI arises from a time when James Dean was rocking the screen and Elvis was celebrating his first “Blue Christmas”. While the statistical framework is based on the writings of French Mathematician Legendre from 1805, most AI models are based on technology from the 50’s.
1950, the world-famous Turing test is created by Alan Turing (who will soon be commemorated on the new £50 note). The test reflects on the question whether artificial intelligence is able to appear indistinguishable from a human in terms of thought and behaviour.
1951, the first artificial neural network was created by a team of computer scientists: SNARC (Stochastic Neural Analog Reinforcement Computer). They attempted to replicate the network of nerve cells in a brain. It imitated the behaviour of a rat searching for food in a maze. This was largely an academic enterprise.

SNARC computer

In the same way, 1952 rouses the birth of the first computer learning program or machine learning by Arthur Samuel. The program played checkers and improved at the game the more it played. Machine learning, a subset of AI, is defined as the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed what to “think”. It enables computers to learn from their own mistakes and modify to an altering environment. Machine learning also includes other technologies such as deep learning and artificial neural networks. Nowadays this technology can, among other things, use data and statistical analyses to predict possible future scenarios such as for Cash flow forecasting.
The Dartmouth Summer Research Project was a 1956 summer workshop and widely considered to be the starting point of artificial intelligence as a scientific field. With this uprising of technology there came a lot of excitement for the potential of automation in finance and treasury. It was believed to help accountants and bankers speed up their work. But if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. And in this case, androids would be riding along with them. Unfortunately, a reduced interest in the field and many failed projects leave artificial intelligence stranded in what is called the ‘AI winter’.

Luckily humans are not one trick ponies, so our story doesn’t end here. After a period of economic & technological proliferation in the 1980’s, Expert Systems found their way into the world of finance. These are computer systems that are capable of decision-making on the level of a human expert having been designed to solve complex problems. But when push came to shove, the technology wasn’t mature enough and didn’t meet client’s demands.

In 1991 the World Wide Web was opened to the public. It’s the start of the data revolution. In 2005, it reached 1 billion people and today more than half of the world’s population is connected to the internet.
Coming back to our first example, it was in this period (1997) that Deep Blue challenged the capacity of the human brain and proved it could think more strategically than a human being.
Today AI is demanding so much computing power that companies are increasingly turning to the cloud to rent hardware through Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings. That’s why around 2006, players such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) opened up its cloud environment to broaden the capacity of AI even further.

In the same year, Geoffrey Hinton coined the term “deep learning”, helping the progress of operating AI applications in the real world. This brought the world one step closer to bridging the fuzzy gap between humans and androids.
2015, AlphaGo is introduced to the world. Two years later in 2017, its successor AlphaZero sees the light of day.
2019, the first picture of the black hole M87 the constellation Virgo is rendered through artificial intelligence opening the door to new knowledge in the universe. The path of AI took us a giant leap forward, but we’re far from the finishing line. Roughly 90% of the universe exists of dark matter or dark energy that leaves us in confusion. Accordingly, a similar percentage of untapped dark data, the fundamental building block to understand a company’s future, isn’t being used.

Source

Impressive year for our partner Cashforce

| 28-1-2020 | treasuryXL | Cashforce |

We are very proud at our partner Cashforce. What a year it has been for Cashforce! From opening new offices, to processing millions of transactions, Cashforce successfully round up 2019. More specifically last year, Cashforce:

Opened up three new offices in London, Copenhagen and Ghent
Moved its HeadQuarters to Antwerp, Belgium
Visited over 20 countries during 2019
Attended 12 Treasury conferences, gave 9 speaking sessions, hosted 4 Belgian Beer Nights and gave away 2159 Chocolates
Processed over 40 million transactions, doubled their clients, hired 14 new FTE’s and collected $5 million of investments by Citi & Inkef
Gained 724 followers on social media, consumed 10,498 cups of coffee and held 5 board game nights
Won the best use of Artificial Intelligence in Treasury Management reward by Global Finance Magazine 2019 and became 1 of the Top 5 hottest Startups in Belgium
Settled new partnerships with Citi, BNP Paribas and KBC
Upgraded their Smart Algorithms and further developed Artificial Intelligence

Source

From a P&L to a Cash-driven organization in less than a year after implementing Cashforce

| 7-1-2020 | treasuryXL | Cashforce |

For many multinational corporations, effectively managing their working capital across numerous regions can be a significant challenge. Additionally, optimizing cash streams in a complex data environment can be a time-consuming process. The same issue goes for Dawn Foods, a global B2B bakery ingredient supplier with multiple entities & finance departments. With more than 50 locations worldwide, serving products in 106 countries and 40.000 customers served globally it is one of the main players in the food industry.

Starting 2015 the company started a change management process to turn Dawn Foods into a more cash orientated company. A taskforce was created supported by Bart Messing, European Treasury Manager and Marc Kersten, European IT director, sponsored by the VP Finance & IT Michael Calfee.

Their key objective was a 10% year-over-year reduction of Net Working Capital Days.

One of the essential building blocks of this plan was implementing a 24/7 working capital tool whereby the KPI’s could be reported into several dimensions that are relevant to the different business units and functions. The different dimensions are important, as the business will only support improvement processes and accept targets unless the KPI’s are measured in relevant dimensions.

After careful comparison based on an extensive survey under key business people between internal/external tools on quality requirements, costs and potential benefits, Cashforce, a ‘next-generation’ cash & working capital analytics solution, came out on top. By designing a proof of concept, in cooperation with the internal IT department, a successful solution was reached. After the implementation the results were already significant in a short time: an instant working capital dashboard that provides 24/7 insights, as well as with simulations in different dimensions that are relevant for each department.

By providing the right technology, in combination with an unmatched cross-departmental cooperation, Dawn Foods was able to build a bridge between its finance department and the rest of the departments, thus reducing complexity and increasing visibility and insights.

This led to millions of dollars saved since setting up the new project (over a three-year period). The cash that was freed up has in the meantime been used to finance a strategic acquisition.

How to generate an accurate cashflow forecast | 3 key factors

| 10-12-2019 | treasuryXL | Cashforce |

One would imagine that in a world where smart cities and virtual reality are becoming a part of daily reality, treasury and finance departments would have perfected their cash forecasting by now, giving the CFO a level of confidence in the numbers. Surprisingly, that doesn’t appear to be the case at all – both PwC’s & Deloitte’s Global Benchmarking studies highlighted cash and liquidity risk as the most important treasury challenge to manage.

If you look closer, it’s not difficult to see why: try managing and forecasting the cash flows of a complex internal ecosystem of multiple ERP’s, FX exposure and geographic entities, combined with increased global uncertainty, tax changes, interest rate rises, and regulatory change. Still, having an accurate cash flow forecast and understanding the underlying drivers is essential to a company’s well-being, as it can help you foresee potential problems which may arise in the year ahead. A lot of companies around the world are therefore increasing their efforts when it comes to cash flow forecasting, but with variable results and accuracy.

So what sets good cash forecasting (i.e. accurate and efficient forecasting) apart from bad cash forecasting (i.e. not transparent, inaccurate & time-consuming cash forecasting)?

KEY SUCCESS FACTOR #1: BEING ABLE TO DRILL DOWN INTO YOUR ACTUAL CASH FLOW DRIVERS BY USING TRANSACTION-LEVEL / GRANULAR DATA

A lot of Corporate Treasurers are seeking an accurate cash forecast through a delicate combination of well-chosen cash flow drivers & assumptions. But, to what extent do they have a good view of these cash flow drivers? Do they know what is really eating and feeding their cash (more than the typical high-level AR, AP, Treasury flows that your Treasury Management System will consolidate)?

There isn’t a lot of visibility, unfortunately. Why is that? The classic TMS will typically consolidate basic forecasted flows from the different OpCo’s. The problem is that these OpCo’s cash forecasts are already consolidated from the underlying business transactions. This blurs the insight in the real cash flow drivers and gives no assurance whatsoever on the quality of the data.

To build a good forecast, it is important to have clear and error-free access to the underlying business transactions. In a recent PwC study, only 6% of respondents said they made use of the inputs at the transactional level. But thanks to advances in technology, particularly big data analytics, treasurers can have instant access to the details of the underlying cash movements and are given the ability to drill down to the transaction level. In the gif below, you can see what this means in practice.

Suppose you want to know exactly what drives your company’s cash flow in a certain period. The GIF below demonstrates how easy this could be, using the right platform. Via an easy-to-use click-through interface, the user is able to gain insights per month, quarter, week and day including instant access to the transaction level details.

KEY SUCCESS FACTOR # 2: APPLYING THE RIGHT FORECASTING LOGIC IS CRUCIAL FOR A GOOD FORECAST

Cash flow forecasting is often associated with a pile of Excel sheets and manual work. Treasurers are forced to turn to Excel to calculate their forecasts, because classic Treasury Management Systems do not offer the required flexibility.

Getting insights into all your OpCo’s cash flow drivers is one thing but combining all these data sources and applying the right logic/rules to generate a good forecast is another. Let’s take the example of applying vendor payment behavior. Intuitively, it makes sense to enrich invoicing & sales order details with data on when vendors actually pay. Many companies, however, struggle to take this data into account. In general, they haven’t set up the appropriate algorithms to include in their forecasts. Hence, they face inaccurate forecasts and a lot of time is spent explaining (over and over again) why it was inaccurate.

Defining forecasting logic in a smart way is not an easy challenge. Yet, if your goal is to achieve an accurate forecast, a set of smart logic algorithms is invaluable. Again, modern technology proves to be a great asset. Progressive companies are using technology-driven, smart engines to calculate & automate their cash forecasts, taking over the manually intensive work and proposing logic that could improve the forecast in the future.

Above you can see how a smart engine works in practice. Cash flows are projected into the future (blue line) using forecasting logic. The dotted orange line represents a scenario with one or more of the underlying assumptions changed and immediately shows the impact relative to the blue line.

KEY SUCCESS FACTOR #3: A GOOD FORECAST IS ONE THAT IS USED TO DRIVE ACTION

Even if your forecast is no less than a piece of art, it might be underused, or not used at all. To make a real impact, there should be actions retrieved from the forecast results. There is a lot of potential in accurately predicting what might happen in the future and this potential should be translated into value.

There is even more value in considering multiple scenarios by changing some of the underlying assumptions (e.g. changing the day or frequency of your payment runs). When working in Excel or a TMS, changing assumptions might trigger a lot of additional manual work and is unfortunately often avoided. To get the most out of your forecasting process, it makes sense to build multiple forecasts and assess the impact of each of these scenarios on cash optimization. Driving action combined with building multiple scenarios, can transform finance departments into business partners for fueling a company’s growth.

The orange line reflects a scenario, built by the user. These views give her/him an immediate comparison between the current forecast (full blue line) and a different scenario (based on assumptions made by the user). A powerful simulation engine is able to show the impact of different scenarios in a blink. Imagine the power this can bring to a business-driven finance department.

Mark O’Toole heads up the Americas for Cashforce, a big data analytics & TMS technology provider focused on cash management, forecasting and working capital.

Cashforce raises €5 million in series a funding led by INKEF Capital & Citi Ventures

| 18-10-2019 | treasuryXL | Cashforce |

Cashforce, a Fintech leader in Cash forecasting & Working capital management, announced that it has closed € 5 million in Series A funding. The growth financing round was led by INKEF Capital and Citi Ventures. The existing investors Pamica NV, the investment company of Michel Akkermans, and Volta Ventures, are co-investing and reinforcing their commitment to the company.

Since 2018, Cashforce has demonstrated hyper-growth by developing multiple partnerships and by streamlining Cash forecasting processes & Working capital management for enterprise customers globally. New offices have been opened in London, Ghent and Copenhagen in 2019, with others (Zurich, Singapore…) to follow soon.

This funding round will accelerate global growth and presence in new markets.

“With the help of Cashforce’s technology, the way cash flow forecasts are generated and Working capital is managed can be radically transformed. By addressing these deep-seated challenges for many corporates using automation and AI, Cashforce is well-positioned and has tremendous potential to significantly help enterprises,” commented Corné Jansen, Managing Director of INKEF Capital.

”There is an increasing appetite in corporate treasury for integrated decision support tools from their banks for the next investment, fund or hedge action going beyond what their existing systems can provide today. As a prerequisite step to delivering such solutions from Citi, we look forward to collaborating with Cashforce to significantly improve our clients’ ability to aggregate disparate data sets across their enterprise to help better manage their working capital and more accurately predict through algorithmic techniques their potential liquidity exposure. At Citi, we are running a number of experiments collaborating with our clients and fintechs – such as CashForce – empowering our clients’ journey towards Smart Treasury. This journey moves them beyond descriptive analytics to decision support and decision automation, offering the opportunity to realise the promise of full automation of operational treasury,” said Ron Chakravarti, Citi Managing Director, Global Head – Treasury Advisory.

Executive Chairman Michel Akkermans and CEO Nicolas Christiaen stated: “Cash forecasting still remains one of the most important challenges for treasurers worldwide. The last three years have been very fruitful for us, developing our solution and broadening our eco-system through partnerships with global banks, treasury consultants and bank connectivity partners. Our mission remains unchanged: delivering reliable technology that enables financial leaders to make high-caliber decisions. We are therefore very enthusiastic about our new global strategic banking partnership with Citi, jointly offering their corporate clients a crystal-clear future.”

About INKEF Capital

INKEF Capital is an Amsterdam-based venture capital firm that focuses on long-term collaboration and active support of innovative technology companies. INKEF Capital was founded in 2010 by Dutch pension fund ABP and with €500 million under management is one of the largest venture capital funds in the Netherlands. INKEF focuses on investment opportunities in Healthcare, Technology, IT/New Media & FinTech.

About Citi Ventures

Citi Ventures ignites change and reimagines solutions that drive economic progress for clients. Headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices in San Francisco, New York, London and Tel Aviv, Citi Ventures accelerates discovery of new sources of value by exploring, incubating and investing in new ideas, in partnership with Citi colleagues, our clients, and the innovation ecosystem.

About Pamica

Pamica is the investment company of 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 organizations, as well as a venture partner and Chairman of Volta Ventures.

About 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 PMV.

CASH FORECASTING SURVEY RESULTS 2019 TOO MUCH PROCESSING, NOT ENOUGH FORECASTING? – 5 KEY INSIGHTS

| 26-03-2019 | treasuryXL | Cashforce | Nicolas Christiaen

Cash is often labeled as the lifeblood of an organization as it enables a company to function. However, when it comes to forecasting cash, most companies face various challenges. Afterall, it starts with the uncertainty of the future, but more factors are at play. Decisions about risk vs reward, the essence of business, can be difficult. To learn more about the complexity of the topic from first-hand data, we initiated the first Cash Forecasting Survey together with the Financial Executives Consulting Group. This survey was focused on senior financial and treasury executives. The 225 respondents are active across a variety of industries (manufacturing, energy, retail, telecommunications, health care, …) that range from smaller businesses (35% under $50 million revenue) to big corporations (28% over $1 billion revenue).

This survey aims to dig a little bit deeper into the challenges that companies are currently facing, the underlying causes of these difficulties, as well as possible future trends and technologies that could ease these challenges. The results of the survey will be discussed in-depth during a webinar on the 27^st of March, 2019 (11am EST / 4pm CEST). To lift the veil slightly we’ve distilled our top 5 key insights below.

1. CASH FORECASTING REMAINS THE TOP ISSUE

A company’s ability to forecast the future with any degree of certainty is determined by external factors (i.e. competitor’s actions, market conditions such as interest rates and local tax rates) or internal factors (availability of funds, staff available, technology in use, access to data etc.). Regardless of whether one is a pessimist or an optimist there should be very little to argue about the fact that cash forecasting is one of the central pillars of treasury, and therefore has been on the radar for improvement for many companies for a decade. The graph below hints at the current focus: Given the opportunity to rank the most important issues over the next year, “cash forecasting” comes out on top (34%). Furthermore, we see in the answers that there is a big focus on the outcome as such, as well as on improving the current processes that are at play (such as management reporting, upgrading financial systems).

WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE FOR YOUR COMPANY OVER THE NEXT YEAR?

2. TIME IS MONEY

For the past decades, Excel has been integral to businesses everywhere. It’s embedded in countless processes throughout the company, including within finance and treasury departments. While spreadsheets remain popular as a tool to accomplish many tasks, even their users admit that they are error prone. Moreover, maintaining data integrity within spreadsheets can be a cumbersome and manual task since this type of technology was never meant to be an integrated solution to business issues (i.e. data from one spreadsheet almost never flows seamlessly into another spreadsheet).

Nonetheless, as the graphic below lays out, more than 9 out of 10 respondents continue to use spreadsheets for collecting/creating cash forecasts & making comparisons to actuals. 69% of respondents however find the process too time consuming. On top of that, the graph clearly shows that this is the case in all surveyed treasury/finance areas. Overall, we can state there is still a great over reliance on spreadsheets, from cash forecast generation to debt management. Combined, these insights indicate a dire need for a better solution in the area of cash forecasting and treasury management.

DO YOU USE EXCEL SPREADSHEETS FOR THE FOLLOWING TASKS?

WHAT ARE THE LIMITATIONS OF USING SPREADSHEETS TO PERFORM?

3. PROCESSING AGAINST THE CLOCK

The following graph further illustrates how frustratingly long any spreadsheet driven forecast process can be. If we look at the distribution of respondents that spent more than 10% of their resources on creating/updating cash forecasts, we can see that 43% of respondents spend more than 2 hours a day on average on creating/updating cash forecasts. Naturally, with only limited resources available for processing, forecasts will be less than “perfect” until conditions are changed. Investing in “better” technology has been shown to help the forecasting process, but technology alone (i.e. working faster) is not a substitute for working smarter (i.e. more strategically) as the following survey observation makes clear.

WHAT PERCENTAGE OF STAFF RESOURCES ARE SPENT ON CREATING/UPDATING CASH FORECASTS?

4. A TMS IS NOT MADE FOR CASH FORECASTING

It cannot be said with certainty what the “perfect” allocation of resources devoted to processing vs planning / analysis should be in the forecasting process. As mentioned earlier there is a continued reliance on a disparate set of 1980s technology (i.e. spreadsheets) perhaps because they are easy to use and offer a certain degree of flexibility. However, basing your forecasting on technology that offers little in the way of scenario planning, ability to sum up / drill down through an organization or track change by date, user, etc. may constrain a company’s ability to measure its success.

In response to the weaknesses of spreadsheet driven forecasts many companies over the last decade have implemented a large number of Treasury Management Systems (TMS). Yet, the adoption of a TMS for forecasting purposes has been slow to occur. As the survey results show, more than 9 out of 10 respondents still use spreadsheets for cash forecasting, even when using a TMS. It is a surprising statistic and may indicate that a TMS maybe better at processing (e.g. cash positions, payment execution, cash accounting, etc.) than at planning / forecasting.

WHAT FINANCIAL SYSTEMS ARE USED WHEN PERFORMING THE FOLLOWING FUNCTIONS?

5. NO PROPER REWARD STRUCTURE BASED ON CASH FLOW

As seen in previous paragraphs, the processes involved in cash forecasting are mostly done manually and with error-prone tools and processes. As a result, companies frequently struggle to foresee unexpected occurrences that impact the livelihood of their business. Bridging these gaps can pose considerable risks and can be very costly to overcome. Consequentially, one would expect companies to put rewards in place for their business units in order to draw out valuable insights when it comes to cash flow. Yet, 3 out of 4 companies don’t reward their business units based on cash flow. Even among the large companies (i.e. revenue > 500MM) only 33% of companies reward their business units based on cash flows. It prompts the question: If cash forecasting ranks as the number one issue, how come it is rewarded as a by-product rather than a focal point?

WHICH METRICS BELOW DOES YOUR COMPANY USE AND WHICH ONES ARE USED TO REWARD ITS BUSINESS UNITS?

CONCLUSION

As the survey shows, cash flow forecasting is an important tool used by businesses to peer into the future and work towards accomplishing previously set profitability, liquidity and risk goals.

Unfortunately, all forecasts will be “wrong” as the future is uncertain and forces companies to navigate through a seemingly infinite sea of scattered data that only increases over time and becomes prone to human error as it accumulates up and down the organization.

Though no forecast will be perfect, any forecast requires a certain amount of dedicated resources (e.g. staff time throughout the company, integrated sets of data and the technology to turn data into information). If too many resources are devoted to processing then there will be less time remaining, possibly reducing the quality of actual decisions made. Few companies should base their strategic decisions based mostly on time left over as it may harm, not benefit the company. Depending on the size of the company, the following trends can be seen:

At many large companies treasury departments have taken the lead on cash forecasting by beginning to replace their spreadsheets with more purpose-built applications such as a TMS, but even this type of system appears to have limitations, perhaps because it had its origins in processing transactions rather than comparing alternative futures and lacks real “what if” features.
At small to medium sized companies FP & A areas are often responsible for cash forecasting, but, as the survey shows, spreadsheets are not the best forecasting tool and ERP systems contain only historical data that is difficult to extract and project into the future.

There is no definite answer to what mix of resources should be employed to achieve success, but relying on the current mix of disparate technologies doesn’t seem to be the answer. Fortunately, advances in new technology available to users through out a company are paving the way towards a clearer future, one driven by analytics, visualization, automation and transparency of data across an entire company.

Curious about additional findings from our survey? Be sure to register here for the webinar on the 27^st of March, 2019 (11am EST / 4pm CEST) where we will discuss these and other findings and learn more about the challenges and solutions of Cash Forecasting.

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Cash flow prognoses zijn van vitaal belang in corporate treasury

| 29-11-2018 | Cashforce | treasuryXL |

De lancering, eerder deze week, van het nieuwe liquiditeitsbeheerportaal van HSBC, moet begin volgend jaar worden gevolgd door een nieuw Cash Flow Forecasting-platform, dat laat zien hoe liquiditeitsbeheer en kasstroomvoorspellingen met elkaar verweven zijn. Er is een groeiend aanbod van leveranciers die zich op dit gebied concentreren, waaronder onze partner Cashforce.

Cashforce maakt verbinding met alle gegevensbronnen die het geld beïnvloeden, om een zeer nauwkeurige cash forecast te bouwen. Slimme algoritmen worden toegepast om nog meer nauwkeurigheid te bieden en zullen
pro-actieve optimalisatie acties tonen. ”

Het belang van kasstroomprognoses neemt steeds verder toe. Bruce Lynn, Managing Partner bij The FECG LLC, is bezig met de laatste fase van zijn onderzoek onder 200 bedrijven wereldwijd en hun gebruik van cash flow forecasting en werkkapitaal management. Hij is van mening dat het belang van cash flow forecasting toeneemt omdat er sinds 10 jaar weer sprake is van een stijgend renteklimaat. Hij vindt dat:

De ‘beste’ bedrijven dit belang zullen erkennen en trachten de inherente variaties te verkleinen die zullen optreden omdat de toekomst onzeker is.
Ze zullen moeten investeren om “zichtbaarheid” te verkrijgen over hun “stromen” (werk, contanten, boekhouding, informatie). Investeringen zullen niet alleen veranderingen op treasury afdelingen, maar ook operationele afdelingen met zich meebrengen waar de grotere cashflows plaatsvindt.
De “slimmere” bedrijven zullen hun personeel naast de bestaande beloningen ook belonen voor het genereren van meer en stabielere kasstromen
Probleem (zoals onderzoek lijkt aan te geven): gebrek aan informatie op operationeel niveau; relatieve onbelangrijkheid van kasstromen versus winst. Hoge afhankelijkheid van de technologie van 1980 (dat wil zeggen spreadsheets)
De overige bedrijven zullen hun kapitaalkosten zien stijgen naarmate ze overgefinancierd raken of te weinig investeren. Het risico zal vooral hoog zijn voor bedrijven die vreemd vermogen gebruiken om het verwachte rendement van het eigen vermogen te verhogen.

Binnenkort zal er een survey uitgebracht worden waarvan de resultaten hier gedeeld zullen worden.

Cashforce – Cash forecasting & Smart Treasury

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Cashforce raises €2 Million to accelerate international rollout

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

Cashforce: Treasury year-end meetup

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

How does liquidity forecasting accelerate growth: Cashforce @ DACT Treasury Fair

| 17-11-2017 | treasuryXL | Cashforce |

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 throughout the day on topics including, trade finance, supply chain finance, liquidity forecasting, cyber security and the Blockchain. There are more than 50 exhibitors present at the Trade Fair including Cashforce – a partner of treasuryXL, who are also presenting a Workshop.

Company Profile

Cashforce is an innovative Cash & Treasury Management System, focused on automation and integration. As a ‘next-generation’ Cash management solution, Cashforce helps finance/treasury departments save time and money by offering accurate cash flow forecasting, flexible treasury reporting & automation.Cashforce is unique in its category, because it allows users to drill down to the transaction level details and the system integrates seamlessly with ERP systems & banking systems. In addition, an intelligent simulation engine enables companies to consider multiple cash flow scenarios and measure their impact. As a result, finance / treasury departments can be turned into business catalysts for cash generation opportunities throughout the company.

Workshop

Cashforce will be co-presenting a Workshop at 13:45, entitled How does Liquidity forecasting accelerate growth and what’s the role of the treasurer

The 2017 Global Treasury Benchmark Survey from PwC shows that companies worldwide hold a staggering $ 1.1 trillion (!) of excess liquidity in their business operations. These hidden liquidities can be tracked by an accurate and automated cash management and forecasting process. These can then be used to lower the company’s working capital or to realise additional growth.

Setting up an automated cash management & forecasting process has at last been made possible as a result of technological progress. Currently, 87% of treasurers still use manual spreadsheets. However, this process can be organised much more efficiently.

To demonstrate how this can be achieved, this workshop sets out the challenges of accurate cash flow forecasting, supported by a case study presented by the Interfood Group.

With $ 1.4 billion in annual revenue, Interfood is one of the leading global dairy traders and suppliers. Through 15 global offices worldwide, Interfood distributes over 800,000 MT of dairy products a year. Together with Cashforce, Interfood has set up an automated cash forecasting process. The case will be presented by Vincent Almering (Finance Director Interfood B.V.). Vincent has led the project from start to finish and acts as the key lynchpin for the different users (Traders / Treasury / Finance / CFO). Vincent will share the challenges and benefits of cash flow forecasting as well as his experiences. Finally, there will be a discussion on the main lessons learned, aimed at treasurers who are looking for a solution for an automated and accurate cash forecasting process.

Speakers: Vincent Almering, Financial Director Interfood B.V. – Nicolas Christiaen, CEO Cashforce. Moderator: Martijn Duijnstee, Manager Business Development Cashforce NL

Language: Dutch

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

We wish Cashforce success at the DACT Treasury Fair!!

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