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IDC MarketScape: Worldwide SaaS and Cloud-Enabled Enterprise Treasury and Risk Management Applications 2023 Vendor Assessment

The IDC MarketScape: Worldwide SaaS and Cloud-Enabled Enterprise Treasury and Risk Management Applications 2023 Vendor Assessment underscores the crucial role of effective liquidity management. The report highlights liquidity ratios as vital indicators of financial stability, impacting decisions and investor confidence.

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What is a Payments Hub – and Why Do I Need One?

According to a recent WEX Worldwide survey commented on by Treasury Today – 52 percent of organizations admit to being victims of payments fraud. Many times treasury is directly affected, because their payments were compromised, while other times, the treasurer is pulled into the conversation to fix whatever vulnerability was exploited for someone else’s payment. Regardless of how or why, treasury is being asked to provide better payments solutions by the CFO, CIO and CISO. Payment hubs provide that answer, in that they offer the global visibility and standardized controls that are so necessary to ensure that every payment is handled in a consistent manner regardless of geography, payment type or who requested it. Payment hubs, which were the subject of a new e-book, ensure payment workflows comply with the organization’s payment policy. Additional reading: 15 Minute Guide to Payment Hubs This is why CIOs are demanding that payment hubs (depicted below) be implemented and are often asking treasury to take charge. What a payments hub should look like – Here’s a graphical representation of a payments hub, including external inputs, key functions, payment types, connectivity and more.  When treasury does lead the initiative for a payment hub, they found the following benefits: Standardization The key to eliminating unauthorized payments – even if accidental in nature – is to ensure a standardized set of controls that prevail without exception. Controls could include payment approval scenarios, extra layers of authentication, procedures if approvers are remote and/or unavailable, and specific actions if modifications to the payment are required. The organization’s payment policy should be digitized and enforced by the payment hub software to ensure these controls are consistently applied. Payment Screening Many organizations require payments to be screened against sanctions lists prior to sending those instructions to the bank. While this is a good practice, screening should not stop there. Payment scenarios – e.g. payments being made outside of approved countries, first payment to a new bank account, irregular payment amounts, etc. – should also be screened in real-time so that any suspicious payments can be stopped and quarantined in real-time to be reviewed by authorized reviewers. As payments continue to diversify across multiple channels (e.g. wires, ACH, checks, B2P, blockchain) and become more real-time, organizations cannot rely on treasury staff scanning every payment in real-time; nor can they expect their banks to be the last line of defense. More sophisticated solutions including robotic process automation, should be leveraged to provide the best possible protection. Fortunately, such solutions are available within most payment hubs. Visibility Many treasury teams struggle with having complete transparency into all outgoing payments before they happen. This issue magnifies as organizations also adopt new request for payment strategies to improve collections. Treasury isn’t learning about payment activity early enough to make effective cash and working capital decisions. Payment hubs, through the consolidation of all payment activity, can provide that visibility to treasury so they can be certain about what payments need to be funded. With this added level of precision, working capital can be reduced and a greater percentage of total cash reserves can be deployed to meet organizational KPIs. In many cases, this may directly affect the CFO and Treasurer’s bonus attainment. Cost Not lost in the myriad of benefits is the fact that payment hubs reduce the cost of managing payments. There are several different ways:
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3 Keys for Treasury Success in Asia

Recently, I had the pleasure of learning more about corporate treasury in Asia during visits to our local offices; meetings with clients in Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore; and by attending several treasury conferences. It should be no surprise that corporate treasury is becoming more sophisticated across Asia as firms continue to demand “best of the best” best practices and scalable, easy to use technology. What I found most interesting about treasury in Asia was: Chinese firms are poised to expand internationally – From a treasury perspective, this interest in growing beyond China has heightened interest in treasury technology that delivers onshore/offshore visibility into cash and currency exposures alongside the need to establish more complex treasury structures such as cash pooling to support onshore/offshore sweeps. Chinese firms are continuing to explore establishing regional treasury centers in Hong Kong or Singapore to align with RMB clearing locations. This is an opportunity where treasury best practices are seen as a significant asset by hiring firms. Automation is not the only goal of treasury technology – Asian-based companies are embracing financial and treasury technology, yet are building ROI models and business justification on variables other than just automation and productivity. With costs of FTEs often much lower than we see in Europe or North America, automation is not the solution to increased workloads. As a result, the driver for technology is implementation of best practices, decision optimization (e.g. improved hedging), and support for treasury transformation. Regional treasury centers are becoming more involved in strategic decision making – Organizations that embrace the opportunity to allow Asian treasury teams to manage key functions (e.g. developing pooling structures or designing hedging programs) are able to deliver more strategic value and drive greater bottom line value than those that try to manage all treasury functions from afar. The knowledge and experience being hired into regional treasury centers, especially in Singapore and Hong Kong, rivals and even exceeds treasury talent in other parts of the world. This expertise is obviously in addition to local knowledge and the ability to work face to face with offshore internal and external partners to treasury. Additional reading: Overcoming Cash Forecastng Challenges: Best Practice Tips for Treasurers Treasury organizations that are already well established in the region already know where the right locations are; how to secure experienced staff; and the importance of adopting world-class treasury technology to ensure global visibility over cash, exposures and financial controls. For organizations considering a greater investment in Asia, it is important to: Choose locations that can offer support in English and local languages, with workable time zones that can also overlap with the head office at some point during the day. Locations that have financial proximity to China (e.g. Hong Kong, Singapore, Macau) are critical so your offshore treasury center is a financial gateway into China itself. Secure experienced staff who not only have global treasury experience, but know how to balance this with local expertise. The right people need to be motivated and trained well, earning new opportunities to leverage their growing treasury knowledge Have the right treasury technology in place that supports global requirements, but also local needs (which could be preferred language, local regulations, specific payment or bank account controls, or dashboards that highlight local treasury KPIs). The reduced footprint offered by the cloud helps, as does the ability for a cloud TMS to enable all treasury offices to support each other to deliver a complete business continuity plan. Asia is an opportunity and those treasury teams that embrace it will be on the road to global treasury success.
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How to Speed Up Free Cash Flow in a Sluggish Economy

Organizations large and small are impacted by what has been reported as a sluggish global economy, and for many industries this deceleration in growth has investors concerned about their rate of expansion. The combination of weak to moderate growth and demanding investors raises the immediate need for action by global leaders, and puts supply chain at the forefront of the conversation. When demand for products goes down, and working capital is tied up in inventory, investors know they can expect a lower rate of return. What do companies do to maintain stable growth and mitigate potential investor aggravation or worse their lack of confidence? In this scenario, the supply chain is among the first to be tested, adjusted and possibly disrupted for the better or worse of the company. Savvy finance leaders are looking to manage these seasonal and market driven fluctuations with supply chain finance (SCF) programs, and are seeking the right information to set up and implement SCF to help stabilize their operations.  Where there is a question of free cash flow (or the absence of cash), there will be a CFO and treasury group developing a way to optimize working capital. In my last blog, I mentioned one of three pitfalls to a successful supply chain financing initiative is the misalignment of corporate goals and individual incentives. The key challenge here is getting the right people at the table to align goals and teams. Without that cross-departmental commitment and participation, the potential bottom line impact from a supply chain finance program will remain an unrealized opportunity. Additional reading: Making the business case for supply chain finance So, who are the mandatory participants required to successfully launch a supply chain finance program and what is their role? Both the CFO and Treasurer should be the strategic champions of a SCF initiative, as they are mandated to nurture and protect the lifeblood of the organization, its cash position: either by reducing excess cash in exchange of greater yield; or creating free cash flow by extending DPO. It should be obvious that the CEO’s stamp of legitimacy demonstrates the level of priority a SCF initiative has within the organization as a whole. While strategic leadership at the top is a common goal, it’s not one that is easily attainable unless treasury and procurement are working together to build a business case that supports the initiative. The Chief Procurement Officer should play an active part both on internal and external matters. Internally, the CPO should guarantee that the procurement organization’s compensation plan is aligned with the working capital increase objectives and stress the importance of this initiative to his teams. The incentives should be different if the company engages in a Dynamic Discounting exercise or in an extension of DPO. Externally, when possible, the CPO should be involved in the discussions with the most strategic suppliers, and in so doing, set the tone for negotiations through the procurement team. Another department which will be directly impacted by the implementation of a Supply Chain Finance program is the Accounts Payables department. The use of an external platform will have consequences on existing processes - simplifying some, forbidding others and in general forcing a greater rigor on the approval and payment processes as a whole. The AP team will also need to be tactically involved during the functional and testing workshops to ensure the company ERP system and the SCF payment platform are well integrated. As a consequence, it is crucial for the AP Director to be involved early in the process, as the SCF initiative will have a non-negligible impact on its team – namely in terms of time. Finally, as for any technical related activities, the Director needs to be consulted to secure the needed technical resources as well as avoid running into a schedule freeze period, that would result in delaying the whole implementation. It is sometimes difficult to ensure all the above mentioned leaders are actively involved in the SCF initiative. Here are two reasons why the C-level should feel involved in an SCF initiative:
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The Pros of a Multi-Bank Data Integration Solutions

Companies used to offer working capital or (supply chain finance) programs to their suppliers primarily in conjunction with a single bank. That was great for the bank, of course, because it allowed the bank to set the terms of the working capital program, to tie the company into a close, long-term relationship, and to gain maximum benefit from lending money to the company’s suppliers while only taking on the credit risk associated with the company itself. The company in question would, of course, usually be a multinational, large or mid-market business with a good credit rating. Banks’ historic involvement with working capital means that even today – when there are numerous bank-agnostic solutions available on the market – many corporates talk to their bank about their working capital requirements first of all and might even end up being sold a solution without properly exploring other options. The risk with this approach is that the bank’s solution may not actually be the best overall solution for the corporate, taking into account factors such as credit availability, fees, funding costs and onboarding requirements, and also whether the organization has any specific needs, such as wanting to provide finance to suppliers in a country where the bank has no presence. Related reading: How to Increase Financial Performance with Working Capital Programs Related reading: How Working Capital Solutions Can Accelerate Free Cash Flow – and Boost Your Capital Investment by 48 Percent Related reading: Busting Payable Finance Myths in the Digital Age Furthermore, when a corporate sets up a working capital program with a single bank, it is effectively giving a large amount of business to the bank, which will certainly put it in that bank’s good books, but could be harmful to its relationships with other banks and increase its exposure to counterparty risk. Since there is a lot of effort involved with setting up a working capital platform initially, it can be difficult for a company to move to another solution if the bank’s service standards slip, it increases interest rates for suppliers at a steep rate, or it allows the technology underpinning the platform to become antiquated. Another consideration is that a bank’s working capital platform will not necessarily integrate with the company’s forecasting and payments solutions, leading to duplication of effort when it comes to reporting and tracking transactions. Meanwhile, the invoices that will be financed under the working capital program will be stored in the company’s enterprise resource planning systems, not its platform, which reduces the efficiency of the payments process. Finally, when onboarding suppliers to its working capital platform, the company will inevitably have to follow the bank’s procedures, which are likely to be more onerous than its own procedures would be. When a company is weighing up whether to use a bank-hosted program or to invest in its own platform, it should take the following selection criteria into account:
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Why CFOs Should Adopt SCF to Meet Cash Requirements

CFOs today depend on the strategic function of treasurers than in previous years. One reason why treasurers’ role has become more aligned to the CFO’s agenda is a direct result of the treasurer’s ability to unlock value within the organization at a low cost, and drive strategic objectives of the CFO, such as offering a more comprehensive view of cash and payments, acquisition strategies and capital allocation strategies. In fact, securing low-cost financing is arguably the corporate treasurer’s primary objective. Among their many responsibilities, ensuring adequate access to liquidity at the appropriate level of risk and cost is imperative for the success of their role. Luckily for treasurers, there is no shortage of banks eager to discuss various funding arrangements, again based on the probable risk and cost of the FI (financial investment). These funding arrangements will most certainly come at a cost to the treasurer, and drawing down to access the needed liquidity will likely be treated as debt on the balance sheet. Consider SCF (supply chain finance) as a dynamic solution to remedy the issue. While not a new strategy, SCF has yet to fully penetrate the corporate market. In a recent survey conducted by Kyriba and Spend Matters, only 10 percent of polled treasury professionals cited an active SCF program at their organization. Therein lies a tremendous opportunity for treasurers and CFOs to gain a strategic market advantage by adopting this proven, liquidity solution. Additional Reading: The Most Important Value That a Truly ‘Strategic’ CFO Can Deliver What is a SCF program? At its core, SCF, or more specifically reverse factoring, is an arrangement where the corporation (buyer) enlists with banks to make payments on their behalf to suppliers. Reverse factoring provides suppliers with early payment of approved invoices, but instead introduces a third party to deliver invoice financing. Reverse factoring offers an attractive alternative to factoring programs for sellers, by offering a lower discount and more flexible terms than they would achieve on their own. For the buyer, reverse factoring offers an opportunity to extend DPO (Days Payable Outstanding), improving working capital while not hurting the liquidity of key suppliers.   As an alternative to reverse factoring, dynamic discounting programs are best suited for corporates that have excess cash and liquidity. This type of program is designed for organizations looking for an alternative to low yielding short-term investments as these programs typically yield in excess of 10 percent APR. With dynamic discounting, buyers pay their suppliers early using their own funds. The early payment discount is calculated based on a pre-agreed financing rate and the number of days remaining until payment was originally due. The earlier the payment is made, the greater the discount realized for the buyer. So how does a SCF program help drive a broader capital allocation strategy? SCF programs, especially those housed within treasury technology that also leverage cash management workflows, can greatly improve free cash flow – interest free – via a term extension where reverse factoring is introduced to soften the impact to relevant suppliers. Treasurers are better positioned to satisfy committed share buyback, dividend, acquisition or related milestone payments, or debt buyback targets given the influx of cash flow following reverse factoring program deployment. Thus, as the CFO pushes out DPO, the liquidity position improves at no financial cost and without additional debt on the balance sheet. This brings us to an important point: SCF alone is not the strategy, but rather the strategy of the corporation is to improve liquidity, and SCF is the tool to execute against this strategy. Why SCF programs work It is key to understand that the buyer will have a superior credit rating than their suppliers. A survey conducted by JPMorgan found that 65 percent of corporate suppliers are sub-investment grade. In addition, many suppliers face uncertainty as to when they will be paid from their customers, which puts a tremendous strain on these smaller companies and their ability to manage operations. Given these financial and operational factors, suppliers are eager to obtain low cost, predictable financing, and therefore we have a SCF market.
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Treasury Best Practices for Business Continuity

Kyriba recently held a webinar attended by more than 500 treasury professionals that focused on the critical importance of business continuity planning (BCP) for treasury. One quarter of the audience admitted to not having such a plan in place, while nearly 30 percent said they had a plan in place, but had never tested it, according to webinar polling. Needless to say, audience members were eagerly looking for best practices to make their continuity planning more complete. We also learned from the audience that treasury typically manages their own planning and those plans haven’t changed much despite the movement to the cloud. The cloud offers a very different way of thinking about BCP. The best feature of the cloud is that it takes the entire software solution (and data) off your premises. Data centers used by a cloud treasury provider such as Kyriba reside in different global locations than the company offices, so your treasury system still operates without interruption even if the company offices are disabled or inaccessible. Further, cloud treasury providers maintain their own business continuity plans to ensure the treasury software-as-a-service is always running. They build in redundancy of operations, replicating the entire environment so that all the data, the user interfaces, the bank connections, and the security protocols are all available in the “backup location.” If done well, a treasury team should not be able to tell if they are in the primary environment or in the backup. It is especially important that the security is identical in business continuity mode because if that were not the case, then fraudsters would simply focus their hacking efforts on putting platforms into a backup state where systems could be more easily exploited. The other characteristic of cloud-based treasury systems is that those systems are globally accessible via the cloud. Because of this, the same workflows can be run anywhere in the world by authorized users. If set up correctly, the treasury system will feature standardized templates, processes, and visual workflow maps so that temporary and new employees can be on boarded quickly. This ensures that treasury is run the same way no matter who is performing the tasks. This is especially important for business continuity because part of an effective BCP program is ensuring smooth operations even when treasury personnel in the main office are not available. Whether their location loses power or internet access – or the treasury team’s number came up in Powerball lottery – the reality is that the need for treasury exists whether that team is available or not. The right treasury technology deployment will have standardized workflows that can be managed by anyone that is authorized from anywhere the company operates. And it will be do so because of the cloud accessibility combined with the treasury system being a single repository for all data, documentation and visual workflows. Not All Clouds are Built the Same Treasury systems need to be mobile. This is more than just being available in the cloud, however. Treasury systems need to work whether the user is at home (possibly on a really old desktop with an old internet browser), via a tablet or smartphone, and with low speed web connections (e.g. having to use your iPhone as a hotspot for your laptop to get online). If a treasury system cannot support multiple scenarios, it isn’t going to be a reliable component in your treasury’s business continuity plans. And, unfortunately, there are still treasury systems that are not device independent. Make sure that your business requirements also include testing just how mobile your treasury system actually is. Security is Really, Really Important While we briefly discussed the importance of a vendor maintaining security protocols in both production and BCP mode, the treasury team must have the same consistency in their application security. Presuming treasury’s choice of technology aligned with the organization’s information security policies, there will be certain authentication protocols used to log into the treasury system. They may include multi-factor authentication using hard or soft tokens, IP Filtering, virtual keyboards, and/or single sign on (SSO).
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Kyriba on Fox: Trade War Winners and Losers

Editor’s Note: “Mornings with Maria” on Fox Business Network interviewed Wolfgang Koester, Senior Strategist for Kyriba, to learn more about the winners and losers of the US-China trade war. Koester was joined by Benchmark managing partner and tech investor expert Kevin Kelley, and Moody’s capital market chief economist John Lonski, along with Fox anchor Dagen McDowell. Click here to watch the interview on Fox: China trade war: Who will be the winners and losers? Key takeaway for global corporations, according to Koester: The trade war is driving market volatility and supply chain disruption that will result in market winners and losers. Companies need access to accurate, complete and timely data to gain full visibility into their exposures. With that visibility, they can more clearly find opportunities for organic exposure elimination and be able to increase their hedge ratios to protect themselves from impacts to earnings. China's currency manipulation will impact other currencies and any exposures a company has to those other currencies that they're not managing will likely lead to EPS and EBITDA impacts. Bottom line: if you have insight into your exposures and can properly manage the associated risk, then the trade war and CNY devaluation shouldn't cause unnecessary FX impacts. It may still cause supply chain disruptions, but that FX headwind piece will be removed.    What does the trade war mean for future investors in the market? Below is a summary of concerns and analysis based on the recent sell-off of U.S. Futures: Download the Kyriba Currency Impact Report for more information about the $23B in reported 2019 Q1 currency impacts to N. American corporate earnings.  Benchmark Managing Partner Kevin Kelley said he’s “worried about mutually assured disruption,” and asked Wolfgang Koester, chief evangelist for Kyriba, what investors should do to protect their portfolios.   "Trade negotiations with China will continue to create market volatility, where we'll see winners and losers," Koester said. "Investors will want to pick winners. Companies that adjust their supply chain and diversify their resources may have better outcomes," said Koester.    Moody’s Capital Markets Chief Economist John Lonski said, “if China allows its currency to fall further, this implies further depreciation for emerging market currencies. Am I correct to assume that this is going to make it worse for countries repaying for dollar denominated debt?” "Yes, we have to be careful about the 'race to the bottom' of currency devaluations. We saw this in 2015. At the end of the day, investors have to look at companies who know how to manage their risk properly and protect shareholder value," said Koester.   Fox Anchor Dagen McDowell said, “for companies like Tesla, a highly indebted company, how does currency depreciation impact the way they pay their debt back? We just don't know yet how this plays out." McDowell also confirmed from a GM statement made earlier in the week that GM has $18B in cash and can pay dividends to investors for two years. This is a sign that GM is communicating to their shareholders that they are prepared for a down-turn.  For support in managing currency risk, check out the new ebook from Kyriba: Automating Corporate FX. About Mornings with Maria "Mornings with Maria" features anchor Maria Bartiromo alongside a roundtable of rotating industry titans and economic experts discussing the major news and themes driving the business day and the market moves.  
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DTOne Employs a Kyriba Solution to Underpin and Automate Processes

Headquartered in Singapore, DTOne operates a global network for mobile top-up solutions and innovative mobile rewards. The company is able to help over five billion people across emerging economies with greater access to digital communications, stay better connected and as a result, participate more actively in the global economy. DT One's global network interconnects more than 550 mobile operators across 160 countries and delivers smarter data-driven mobile solutions to ensure that no one is left unconnected. Historically, DTOne’s treasury function was fully dependent on manual processes which led to operational inefficiencies and error-prone data. Using spreadsheets for daily cash management and forecasting produced limited visibility of DTOne’s daily cash position, so CFO Dan Gardner took the decision to deploy a technology solution to underpin and automate these processes. In conducting an extensive market review, Dan sought a solution to enhance cash visibility and control of its large and liquid balance sheet for greater cash forecasting confidence. With 40 banking partners and over 150 bank accounts globally, Dan also wanted a solution to accommodate bank account management and in-house banking capabilities. After evaluating a number of TMS providers, he selected Kyriba as a modern, flexible and customisable platform which ticked all the boxes. A cloud-based solution since inception, Kyriba’s ability to seamlessly and fully integrate with DTOne’s existing Oracle ERP was also a defined prerequisite. ‘Digital is very much in our DNA,’ says Dan. ‘We are already very cloud-enabled; every network operator that we deal with is connected through an API and we have a huge stream of real-time transactions being pushed through our global network. Last year we did over 70 million transactions, so not having a cloud-based treasury solution really wasn’t an option.’ Thanks to Kyriba’s SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) model, DTOne’s treasury team is now able to access the company’s consolidated financial reports from anywhere around the world. Having on-demand accessibility has provided company-wide cash visibility and full financial control, as well as the ability to create timely and accurate forecasts to deliver confidence throughout the organisation. Automation and modernised workflows also afforded the Dan’s team with the opportunity to undertake greater value-adding activities by boosting productivity and mitigating exposure to risk and human error. Such scalability has helped increase the team’s productivity without the need for incremental headcount. Furthermore, Kyriba’s sophisticated cash management capabilities and SWIFT integration have exceeded the company’s expectations in terms of centralising payments processing, bank reconciliation and transaction security. Streamlining such complicated processes delivers greater efficiency in controlling DTOne’s vast portfolio of treasury transactions within the Group. Since implementing Kyriba, DTOne has benefitted from improved cash forecasting, automated reporting and centralised payments management, driving a compelling ROI and showcasing the true value of a TMS. The optimisation of treasury management on a global scale has positioned the treasury team to perform more strategic activities and unlock greater value for the overall organisation. Having established cloud-based treasury management and harnessing Kyriba’s sophisticated insights and analytics, DTOne is in a strong position to accelerate growth and strengthen business continuity.
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Cash Mobilization to Unlock Business Value: A Solution for Liquidity Management

In today’s challenging economic and geopolitical environment, companies need cash. They need cash to invest in new companies, cash to innovate and cash to accelerate growth. The problem is that while businesses often may have cash balances across the organization, they lack cash flow forecasting and liquidity structures to efficiently deploy cash where it can be invested efficiently to generate top line value. In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal, companies globally have around $1.5 trillion trapped on their balance sheets, generating little to no interest income, never mind being unavailable for strategic investment. The challenge for treasurers and CFOs is to mobilize cash balances - so that the business can operate more effectively and seize market opportunities as they arise. Related reading: ebook-Perfecting the Cash Forecast There are three critical steps to enable treasury teams can effectively mobilize cash: Cash visibility is the starting point. Many organizations have daily visibility into 80% of their cash, meaning that large amounts of cash are not frequently tracked. This is a missed opportunity that can be easily solved through automated bank connectivity within a treasury management system. Lack of visibility is also a significant risk, as cash held in other countries is subject to currency volatility – and may not be worth as much as you thought if left unhedged. Cash flow forecasting is the second step in cash mobility. CFOs and treasurers require insight into today’s cash balances but just as importantly need certainty into the coming weeks and months. Poor forecasting drives two unfortunate outcomes: Idle cash – because the treasury team cannot be certain as to what cash will be needed, they tend to leave larger than necessary compensating balances in accounts. Inefficient deployment – a bad forecast may mislead treasury into unnecessarily moving cash to fund shortfalls that ended up being surpluses or, worse, thinking they have excess balances (when they don’t). A good forecast will not only identify excess cash and funding requirements, but will also confirm the timing of cash flows so the optimal cash flow forecasting and liquidity decisions can be made. This supports good decision making and reduces both liquidity and currency risk. Cash pooling and in-house banking are the final key steps to optimize cash mobility. Cash pooling and in-house banking are popular cash management structures to enable the movement of cash within country and across borders. Many organizations implement a combination of notional and physical pools to align with tax initiatives and regulatory compliance. The importance of setting up the right cash structures is to maximize the ease of moving liquidity while minimizing the costs and complexity of executing those movements. Here are five ways CFOs can fuel strategic value when the treasury team is tasked with optimizing cash management:
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Why Kyriba Live Treasury & Finance Summit Has Become a Must Attend Event

Sports, music, diversity and finance rarely share the same spotlight, but a recent treasury and finance summit in Las Vegas has transformed the social networking and entertainment landscape for March. The Kyriba Live Treasury & Finance Summit shares the same month as March Madness, SXSW and International Women’s Day, and is quickly becoming a must attend and socially participate in conference. More than 700 finance professionals, treasury and fintech experts and corporate leaders joined-up at the Delano, Mandalay Bay, in Las Vegas, Nevada for a five-day summit that helped set a new standard for treasury and finance events. By all accounts the summit was remarkable, and will be well attended in 2020. Why was the event such a huge success in 2019? There are so many reasons we have to cover the event highlights in two blogs. Part one, this blog, showcases Keynote speakers, the infamous “Accelerate” pool party, Women in Finance, Ecosystem Exposition Hall, news and stories from the event, and a Facebook photo gallery to help relive the experience. Part two will illuminate more insights with client and attendee video interviews, polling data, client and partner awards and more. Inspiring Keynotes Keynotes from Kyriba CEO Jean-Luc Robert, and futurist and best-selling author Daniel Burrus, among many other notable thought leadership roundtables and breakout sessions, set an uplifting tone for the conference. Treasury and finance leaders are transforming the industry empowered by innovations in technology. This is not a surprise, according Robert, “the company started when a CFO client had no way of seeing his cash holdings in disparate countries, but we had a connectivity solution that gave him the visibility he needed to operate more effectively.” Check out the agenda for more details about these sessions and others from a range of presenting companies. The top three sessions at Kyriba Live were What CFOs Expect of Treasury; Digital Innovation Roadmap for a Modern-Day CFO; and APIs - The Future of Bank Connectivity, according to a survey of attendees from a wide range of industries. Women in Finance Kyriba Live took place in the same week as International Women's Day (#IWD2019), providing a showcase for some of the best and brightest women in treasury and finance. They included Kathryn Powers, global treasurer for World Vision, Jennifer Tomaloff, international treasury manager, Trek Bicycle Corp., Jennifer Bowerman, project manager at Amway, Priscila Nagalli, director of treasury and capital markets at Actualize Consulting, and many others. Notable among the women in finance were Tomaloff and Bowerman, whose leadership contributed to award winning achievements for Trek and Amway's treasury teams. These awards will be the subject of our next blog—stay tuned. The Summit also enjoyed a diverse cultural audience with the participation of senior leaders from across the globe, including U.S., Canada, Mexico, Japan, India, U.A.E., and Morocco.   Reportage Industry analysts and media attended Kyriba Live to participate in the summit and to learn about Kyriba’s company vision, and product roadmap. It also gave them the opportunity to network with their peers from AFP, IDC, The Hackett Group, Costco, World Vision, EY, Citi, JPMC, Bank of America, WeWork and others. Treasury and Finance magazine The Global Treasurer wrote several stories capturing topical themes from Kyriba Live panel presentations, including digital transformation, treasury’s role as the trusted advisor to the CFO, and upskilling to compete in the digital age. Read more about it here:
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Four Criteria for True Finance Transformation

Today’s CFOs and treasury executives are leading their organization through increasingly unpredictable economic headwinds. Against this volatile market environment, finance executives are required to make faster and more effective business decisions that protect the organization against loss, as well as enable growth opportunities. As a result, real-time solutions that empower finance leaders with superior visibility and intelligence into their cash and liquidity are becoming increasingly popular. However, many organizations are not equipped with a solution that truly empowers finance leaders.   Here are four outcomes that CFOs should use to validate and spark real finance transformation: Productivity enhancements that deliver competitive advantages over industry peers Real-time visibility, including business intelligence capabilities Systematic enforcement of internal controls The ability to advance cross-functional strategic business partnerships Let’s take a deeper look at why these outcomes are essential to accelerating growth in a volatile marketplace. Increased Productivity with Automation Productivity is not just about the time savings through automation. The objective is to transform your finance team’s output into a competitive advantage over your industry peers. Automation, ease of scalability during rapid expansion, standardization across regions and teams internationally, security protocols to protect against cybercrime and data security, audit reporting to ease compliance burdens are hallmarks of productivity. Kyriba has many success stories that demonstrate many of these benefits. Check out one example from HCSC. Related reading: How HCSC Created a High-Performance Treasury In addition to client case studies, a Kyriba business analysis of 217 organizations who use a TMS found significant performance enhancements, including time and cost savings. The study found that automation and standardization saved more than 450 hours per month, or the equivalent of 57 cross-functional workdays per month. Below is a breakdown of the cross-functional days saved per month, according to the analysis, conducted by Kyriba’s value engineering team: 25 days for cash management and forecasting 16 days for cash accounting and reconciliation 11 days for payment related workflows Savings from deploying a TMS according to The Kyriba Business Value Analysis Study, 2018: $2.5M - The average annual all-inclusive return from deploying a TMS $126K – The average annual savings on bank fee analysis fees $107K – The average annual savings on FX translation $745K – The average annual net interest optimization benefit, derived from 46% reduction in idle cash The value generated from a TMS deployment is significant and is easy to demonstrate. Kyriba value engineers offer a business case analysis and consulting to qualified companies that demonstrates the savings and benefits a TMS can offer to your company. Real-Time Visibility As manual processes are streamlined, more time becomes available for reporting and analysis. For example, Kyriba Business Intelligence goes beyond traditional management reporting by offering data visualization and interactive dashboarding to transform financial data into actionable information. With immediate and dynamic reports, business intelligence offers visual insights that are not possible with spreadsheets. Users can get instant insight into strategic questions such as “What risks are my cash flows exposed to?”, “Has our bank rationalization project met our bank fee reduction metric?” or “Are my global cash forecasts reliable?” Unlocking opportunity with real-time analyses enables senior finance leaders to improve opportunities in any market environment. Systematic Internal Controls With a TMS, treasury can have a lot of fun with strategic analytics in support of driving company growth. Locking down and securing cash is another supporting function that a TMS can help to manage at scale. A TMS can centralize and automate payments and enhance payments workflows with real-time fraud screening capabilities to help reduce loss in three ways:
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Trade Finance Global Names Kyriba as Best Treasury Management Platform

Innovation from banks, technology providers and corporates in the trade and receivables space has bolstered global trade despite geopolitical volatility. The 2019 International Trade Finance Awards by Trade Finance Global (TFG), a leading alternative finance and complex funding solution provider for international trade, are given to those who have made outstanding contributions to international trade. Kyriba was honored to be recognized for its innovation in cloud treasury and finance solutions, including business intelligence, working capital optimization, payments and more. Leading organizations who were also recognized by TFG include, Citi, J.P. Morgan, Bank of America, Maersk and many more. “We are thrilled to be recognized as the ‘Best Treasury Management Platform’ by Trade Finance Global,” said Jean-Luc Robert, Chairman and CEO at Kyriba. “We are committed to building out our industry-leading platform, and expanding the value we bring to our growing list of customers. In the last year, we invested heavily in Europe, expanded our leadership teams, and added more new clients than in the past year.” In fact, 2018 was a record year for growth in Europe, he said. Kyriba’s cloud treasury and finance offering is a preferred by CFOs and Financial Directors seeking a single source of truth to help accelerate growth at their organization. UK based Graff Diamonds uses Kyriba for payments, Auchan for working capital optimization, and many others trust Kyriba for innovations that make a positive impact to their bottom line. In 2018, Kyriba developed Lease Accounting for IFRS 16 and Business Intelligence so financial directors can better understand how to protect and mobilize their assets to accelerate growth at their organization. The company recently announced it surpassed $110M in revenue in 2018. The Technology and Innovation Awards were announced as follows: Innovator in Global Trade – ICC Banking Commission Best Shipping Company – A. P. Moller – Maersk Best Treasury Management Platform – Kyriba Best Trade Finance Software Provider – HPD LendScape Best Trade Technology Company – Export Enterprises Going forward, building innovative technologies such as APIs that bridge corporates and banks, or providing working capital solutions to unlock value for banks, buyers and suppliers will continue to be a force for growth in international trade. Kyriba congratulates all of the winners of TFG’s International Trade Finance Awards 2019.
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Why IT Should Start Digital Transformation Projects in Finance

Information technology leaders, CIOs, CTOs, CISOs and their teams, have an increasingly heavy burden to launch new technology that drives competitive advantages at their organization. The demand for improved security, scalability and efficiency are top priorities for business leaders around the world. Most companies are going through some type of digital transformation to meet these demands, but with so many areas in need of an upgrade to their existing and aging solutions, how do IT teams prioritize projects? Gaining the most value for the organization starts with Finance. Enabling the team to protect and grow cash, and accelerate free cash flow should be the primary consideration for IT teams. Additional reading: 15-Minute Guide to Payment Hubs This article will point out a couple of areas for IT teams to support the organization and get some quick and easy wins for their corporate-wide digital transformation projects such as mission-critical processes related to AP, AR, accounting and treasury through qualified cloud vendors. 1: Connectivity as a Service IT teams globally integrate financial applications for different reasons – for example, consolidated reporting, forecasting, ERP posting, payment generation, sales statistics and more. These integration points can become very complex and costly because of all the different protocols, file formats, firewalls, encryptions and security requirements that must be satisfied. In addition, once you have these integration points working, you still have to actively manage and troubleshoot any issues. Today’s multi-tenant cloud treasury technology is more sophisticated than ever before and can help to streamline this integration process, as well cut down on the implementation and maintenance costs. Vendors have libraries of thousands of prebuilt bank protocols, ERP connections and file formats that have already been developed and successfully tested with hundreds of other clients. By leveraging a cloud vendor to own and manage your connectivity, it takes IT out of the business of building and testing file formats, connection protocols or having to complying with special encryption processes that most banks require. The whole connectivity process can be managed and supported by a qualified vendor, saving hundreds – if not thousands – of IT hours to use on the other strategic digital transformation projects. Some common examples where cloud technology can simplify and replace current processes: Payment file formatting Transmission to and from your banking partners Eliminate logging into multiple banking portals and exporting reports BAI and MT940 reporting from the banks Automating ERP posting files for accounting APIs to banks and other data warehouses Aggregating forecasting data 2: Technology Enhanced Security & Compliance With the amount of fraud and cyber security cases rising by the year, corporations need to make changes to secure the transaction lifecycle. As IT teams go through this transformation process, they can set up themselves up for success – and reduce their workload -- by using a vendor’s technology and best practices to lock down their security. Below are some of the most common solutions our clients look to deploy to enhance their current security and compliance processes.
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CFO as Chief Growth Officer

To what extent are CFOs embracing the role of ‘Chief Growth Officer’? And what does this mean for corporate treasurers? A recent webinar with Nilly Essaides, Senior Research Director at The Hackett Group, and Cheik Daddah, Global VP of Value Engineering at Kyriba, delved into this topic and explored the role CFOs play in supporting profitable growth across the organization. Driving growth CFOs are increasingly positioning themselves as trusted advisors and proactive growth partners to the CEO and the Board – and this means being able to provide a 360-degree view of the business. In other words, as well as having an accurate rear-view image of what happened yesterday, CFOs also need to play a proactive role in shaping the best path forward for the organization. Replay the CFO as Chief Growth Officer webinar According to research by The Hackett Group, organic growth is the number one business strategy priority for senior finance executives, with 34 percent selecting this as their top priority. Innovation and cost reduction can provide attractive opportunities to build a more scalable and flexible structure for growth. But in practice, there is often room for improvement: a poll taken during the webinar found that only 16 percent of the audience rated their finance organizations ‘very effective’ in delivering on their broader, strategic roles. The good news is that digital transformation brings considerable opportunities for cost reduction. As Essaides explained, figures from The Hackett Group show that typical organizations can reduce their finance costs by 35 percent, while even world-class finance organizations achieve a 21 percent reduction in costs by automating processes and taking advantage of new technologies. Areas of opportunity The webinar identified three key areas in which CFOs can help drive enterprise growth: Freeing up cash within the organization. CFOs can achieve this by initiatives such as improving working capital, pursuing operational excellence to free up cash and leveraging technology to negotiate terms with key suppliers and customers. Where working capital is concerned, there is a striking difference between the top quartile of finance organizations by working capital performance, and the median. For example, The Hackett Group found that that top quartile companies had a cash conversion cycle of 17 days, compared to 46.2 days for the median – enabling top quartile companies to free up an average of almost $200 million in free cash flow per $1 billion in sales. This cash can then be used to support organizations’ strategic initiatives. Providing real-time visibility. CFOs can also drive growth by harnessing sophisticated treasury technology to gain better insights into the company’s cash position and its capacity for future cash generation. With improved visibility, companies are also better placed to analyze what percentage of excess cash can be deployed for strategic investments, and minimize external borrowing by moving cash from cash-rich to cash-poor subsidiaries. This is an area which is often ripe for improvement: only 8 percent of the webinar’s audience said that their finance organizations could deliver real-time information and analysis to senior management ‘all the time’. Using technology to manage risk holistically. Armed with greater visibility into the company’s cash position and cash flows, CFOs are also better placed to manage risk more effectively – both by developing a comprehensive financial risk management program, and by minimizing the number of external transactions made so that they can hedge exposures on a portfolio basis rather than individually. Optimizing this area is largely the remit of the CFO: The Hackett Group found that the CFO has ownership of the ERM program in 53 percent of organizations. Implications for treasury As the role of the CFO becomes increasingly growth-focused, treasury likewise needs to adapt to a more forward-looking mindset. This means positioning the treasury as a department that supports informed decision-making via quality insights and strategic guidance. Related survey results: Three Key Areas Where CFOs Say Treasurers Need to be More Strategic
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Three Minimum Security Requirements for any FinTech Companies

Employing financial technology solutions has become a comfortable and productive way of life for many corporate finance leaders, who increasingly rely on these cloud applications to optimize and enhance a core piece of their jobs, from treasury to accounting and beyond. Despite the proliferation and rapid adoption of financial technology solutions by global organizations from all industries, however, the solution providers should not escape scrutiny in one key area: security. Additional reading: Kyriba Now Enables Clients to Conduct Their Own Pen-Tests Additional reading: Four Key Questions a CTO Needs to Ask When Evaluating a New TMS “Most FinTech vendors have access to highly sensitive financial information, so a company playing in this space needs to have some minimum things in place so their customers have a strong sense of their commitment to security,” said security expert Nick Biasevich, the director of technical sales enablement at Kyriba. According to Biasevich, there are three minimum requirements any vendor should be able to provide: A Cyber Defense Center: A dedicated team whose sole purpose is to protect clients and their customers from potentially disastrous cyberthreats and cyberattacks. The principal tool these defense teams use is a security information and event management system, or SIEM, which actively monitors every end-point in the company, looking for any type of suspicious activity. Without a SIEM in place, companies have to do this manually, an extraordinary amount of work that leaves organizations open to security risk. Authenticated Pen-Testing for SaaS Platforms: There is probably no better test of platform security than authenticated penetration testing, or “pen-tests,” in which the software provider opens-up its SaaS-based application for a client’s IT personnel to take their best whacks in attempting to uncover security flaws. This compares to an unauthenticated pen-test, which is conducted outside of the platform and is not as rigorous or efficient in security screening. An authenticated pen-test requires full cooperation between the vendor and the prospect or client to complete, and is deep sign of the vendor’s security commitment. SOC I and SOC 2 Type II Certification: These certifications are key in assuring that a vendor’s security practices are up to standard. SOC 1 is a statement of operational controls, which sets out the internal controls, processes and procedures that a FinTech vendor abides to when handling data. SOC 2 Type II is a report by a third-party auditor that has audited the vendor’s performance against those controls, on the basis of the evidence provided. A SOC 2 Type II certification means that a vendor has proven that its system is designed to keep its clients’ sensitive data secure. This latter type of certification is expensive and time-consuming and is hard proof that a vendor takes security extremely seriously. There were more than 1,000 global FinTech vendors, according to a 2016 report by Atherton Research. That number has likely grown significantly, fueled by new business models and increasing trust in cloud-based vendors to deliver secure, scalable global applications.  Related reading: Top Security Considerations for Selecting a Treasury Management Vendor
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Bank Connectivity, what you don’t know can hurt

The selection process of a Treasury Management Solution (TMS) is a multi-layered process. One of the most important, and where many decisions are made, is the product demonstration. The product demo is a snapshot into what the TMS offers.  It is human nature to focus solely on the functionality reviewed during the demonstrations.  Ensuring that the functionality meets your business needs is critical.  However, there is more to the decision than the demonstration alone. There are several factors that should be considered in connection with the demoed functionality, in order to ascertain the overall value of a vendor.  Many services, such as customer-service ability, product-enhancement history, vendor viability, technology and security, are all integral characteristics of a best-in-class TMS provider, and should be part of the final decision to select a TMS. Bank Connectivity is one of the critical services that should be discussed with your vendor.  The ability to connect to your banks, and automatically send and receive pertinent information is at the heart of a TMS offering.  When this foundational service is limited, it does not matter how impressive the TMS functionality is. In lieu of robust bank connectivity, your TMS functionality will be impaired. In the TMS space, not all connectivity offerings are created equal.  As a result, simply asking vendors, “Can your TMS connect with my banks?” is not a sufficient question to uncover the pitfalls of an inadequate solution. In addition to the standard RFP questions from the AFP, we recommend the following “enhanced” set of questions to ascertain the real capabilities and limitations of a TMS or third-party connectivity module: 1.       Do you manage your own connectivity or do you outsource your solution? 2.       Do you manage SWIFT BICs on behalf of your clients, or do you outsource this service? 3.       If you outsource your connectivity, what service provider(s) do you use?  If there is a different connectivity provider based on the connectivity type (i.e. SWIFT, host-to-host, Zengin, etc.), please list all providers and respond to the following questions for each provider. 4.       What protocols and formats do you offer for bank-polling connectivity?  If all, or part, of your connectivity solution is outsourced, please provide the protocols and formats by outsource vendor. 5.       What protocols and formats do you offer for bank-payments connectivity?  If all, or part, of your connectivity solution is outsourced, please provide the protocols and formats by outsource vendor. 6.       What SWIFT connectivity do you support? What is your recommendation? 7.       How does the contracting processes work for connectivity? 8.       If there is a problem with bank statements, who is responsible for resolving the problem? 9.       Does your SOC 2 Type II cover your connectivity solution? 10.   Do you proactively monitor the bank connections? 11.   Does your pricing include the bank connectivity or just your software? With the range and scope of the above questions, you begin to see what challenges you may have down the road. Even if your product demonstration was impressive, be sure to ask about key elements that contribute to the functionality of your product. Setting up your team for success is a good position to support, and the right TMS can empower your team to solve your short and long-term challenges. If this article has generated a few more questions that were not addressed, or if you want to talk more about bank connectivity, contact us at [email protected]
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