Tag Archive for: Cashforce

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 27st 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 27st 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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Webinar: Cash Forecasting Survey Results 2019 – Too Much Processing, Not Enough Forecasting?

| 21-03-2019 | treasuryXL | Cashforce |

Even the most experienced treasury departments struggle to create accurate cash forecasts. By conducting the Cash Forecasting Survey 2019 we wanted to find out why companies face challenges that make the future uncertain.

In our upcoming webinar on the 27th of March at 16h00 CET (11h00 EDT), Nicolas Christiaen & Mark O’Toole will discuss the results, moderated by Bruce Lynn of  FECG.

By attending this webinar, you can expect to come away with:

• Current challenges that come with the process of generating cash forecasts
o Out of date technology?
o Overworked or undertrained staff?
o Conflicts between priorities and goals?

• The implications of inaccurate and inefficient estimates on the need for
o Maintaining “enough” liquidity
o Avoiding “too much” risk

• Insights into your peer’s cash forecasting methods

• Possible solutions to improve your current processes when faced with an uncertain future

Claim your seat here!

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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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Partnership Cashforce and BNP Paribas

| 03-10-2018 | Cashforce | treasuryXL |

BNP Paribas and Cashforce enter into a partnership to offer digital cash flow forecasting and working capital services to corporate treasurers. Through this partnership, BNP Paribas will offer to its clients Cashforce’s next-generation digital cash forecasting and treasury management solutions, focused on analytics, automation and integration. To further extend its commitment to this partnership, BNP Paribas also invested in Cashforce.

Pursuing the digitalisation of its Corporate clients’ user experience, BNP Paribas today announced it has sealed a partnership with Cashforce, a Fintech company that will allow the Bank to enhance client journeys within cash management and trade finance. Through this partnership, Corporates will experiment a digital, autonomous and cross-banking solution for their day to day transaction banking needs: by connecting its treasury department with other business and finance departments, and by offering full transparency into the cash flow drivers, accurate and automated cash flow forecasting and treasury reporting.

BNP Paribas continues to invest in its digital offering to treasurers and this partnership – which brings the transaction banking business another step closer to open banking – reflects its technology-centric focus and leadership. The platform is unique in its category because of the seamless integration with numerous ERP systems and financial data sources, the ability to drill down the transaction level details, and the intelligent AI-based simulation engine that enables multiple cash flow scenarios, forecasts and impact analyses.

“This partnership with Cashforce marks a new step in our digital transformation and illustrates our commitment to offering our clients the best-in-class solutions they deserve, wherever they come from. Forming agile partnerships with innovative Fintechs like Cashforce, who leverage new technologies such as AI, helps us to significantly accelerate the digitalisation of our customer journey in the area of transaction banking,” commented Jacques Levet, Head of Transaction Banking EMEA BNP Paribas.

“The partnership with BNP Paribas will further boost our international expansion and make more treasury departments work with accurate, efficient and best-in-class cash flow analytics and cash forecasting solutions. Also our working capital analytics engine will further strengthen the integrated banking and trade finance experience for BNP Paribas’s clients.”  added Nicolas Christiaen, CEO of Cashforce.

The platform will be available to clients through CENTRIC, BNP Paribas’ integrated digital banking platform that gives corporate & institutional actors instant access to the spectrum of BNP Paribas’ online financial services.

The full article can be read on the Cashforce website.

BNP Paribas also posted an article about the partnership which can be found here: https://group.bnpparibas/en/press-release/bnp-paribas-cashforce-enter-partnership-offer-digital-cash-flow-forecasting-working-capital-services-corporate-treasurers


Cashforce – Cash forecasting & Smart Treasury

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Does technology actually help you improve your cash management?

| 31-5-2018 | Nicolas Christiaen | Cashforce |

It is a question that many companies have been asking themselves for the past few years. Innovative, dedicated technologies may be very exciting, but the question remains: Are they worth the investment?

We believe the answer is yes, but understanding the technology & its shortcomings are key to exploiting its full potential. Companies that are missing today’s “FinTech train” might find themselves in precarious situations in the future. They risk becoming relatively less productive and might lack insights that their technology-driven competitors will have. This is certainly true when it comes to Cash & Working Capital Management. Technology is definitely an asset in today’s world, as it can help us driving value from working capital. Interconnectivity has risen significantly, with the surge of in-house banks, cash pooling, POBO, ROBO, etc., forcing treasury departments to keep up with the pace and find ways to manage complex treasury set-ups. On top of that, the number of transactions has grown to such a level that only high-level calculations can be done by humans. Technology helps companies to deal with this magnitude of data and reduces complexity by bringing visibility in companies’ cash flows.

Also, the surge of centralization (look at the number of centralized treasury teams) reduced the number of double tasks and improved the efficiency of Treasury Operations. However, at the same time, keeping treasury connected with the business is becoming the new challenge. In this continuous paradox, technology will prove helpful in connecting both worlds.

However, we need a good understanding of limits & shortcomings of technology too. Today’s systems are capable of calculating expected outcomes & action plans based on a set of parameters. However, technology is not smart enough yet to take into account all parameters (like macro-economic parameters, unexpected events, changes of policies) & and most of all human (= irrational) behavior.

There is a legitimate drive towards using technology, as complexity rises, as is the need for more transparency. Two interesting evolutions are simultaneously taking place: Niche players are betting on making the technology smarter, whilst corporates are getting better at smartly using that technology. There is no reason to believe this will stop in the near future.

 

 

 

Nicolas Christiaen

Managing Partner at Cashforce

 

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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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

 

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

 

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

| 17-11-2017 | treasuryXL | Cashforce |

DACTThe 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.