Treasury & Risk - December/January 2012

AMWAY AND OMNICOM USE WEB-BASED TECHNOLOGY AND SWIFT TO GAIN
REAL-TIME VISIBILITY INTO THEIR MANY BANK ACCOUNTS.
Analytical Makeovers

IN qUIET WAYS, treasuries are using technology to transform operations. Craig
Jeffery, managing partner at consultancy Strategic Treasurer in Atlanta, reports that
leading companies are deploying flexible treasury technology architecture that allows
them to react rapidly to the unexpected threats that seem to emerge every month.
“This analytic-oriented architecture represents the most dramatic response from trea-
sury that has occurred in modern time,” he says. Amway, for one, is taking a big step
is a challenge. Until last year,
in North America that visibility
came from a server-based instal-
lation of Treasury Manager, but
by 2010, the software, developed
by Selkirk, was a product with a
long past and a dubious future.

in this direction. With more than

$9 billion in annual revenue,
the direct seller of consumer
products has a large footprint
that includes 50 affiliates across
the globe. Managing cash flow
takes approximately 1,300 ac-
counts at 200 banks, so visibility
“This global connectivity
gives us real-time visibility of our
cash and will be an important
gauge of counterparty risk,” Pili-
povic says. “We’re empowered
to make more informed deci-
sions about cash, which makes
us more competitive and
supports our global banking
strategy.”
The move to Kyriba has
also made treasury more effi-
cient. “What we were doing was
very manual,” she says. “Now
we’re much more automated,
which frees us up to do other
things.”
Amway started its tech make-
over with a request for propos-
als. It considered bank offerings
as well as treasury software
vendors. “We narrowed the field
down to three for on-site dem-
os,” Pilipovic says, then down to
two, and finally to Kyriba.
Moving to a Web-based solu-
tion opened the door to access
by Amway’s 50 global affiliates
and to standardized, streamlined
reporting, she explains. Affiliates
now report directly through Kyri-
ba using standardized templates,
and the company’s global cash
position is immediately visible,
which provides the foundation
for more accurate and timely
cash forecasts, Pilipovic says.

The first phase of the installation focused on cash position and forecasts. “We can now do a true consolidated global cash forecast in real time, which is

Outside of North America, affiliates reported cash positions on spreadsheets, explains Amanda B. Pilipovic, Amway’s manager of global treasury.

Now Amway, based in Ada, Mich., is wrapping up the first phase of its installation of a Web-based Kyriba workstation that spans the company’s global reach and plans to complete the project in the second quarter.