Thankfully, modern treasury
management systems have made
it possible to have access to timely
and reliable information. While cash
managers used to spend the bulk of their
time gathering data and chasing their
subsidiaries for balance and cash flow
information, they now live in a world
where this is available at the click of a
button.
This has been made possible by
group-wide, one-platform tools where
information is centrally available.
Account statements and the financial
status from across the group are
accessible, as are cash flow information,
long- and short-term cash positions,
forecasts, planning data and reports.
Transparency and visibility have made
cash management operations much more
straightforward and strategic. It’s all
about what to do with the information,
So why would you need more than that?
Cash management has assuredly come a
long way. On the same coin, there is more
ground to gain and progress to be had.
Enhanced automation
There are a number of processes, such as
automatic account statement retrieval
or auto-reconciliation of plan/actual
data, that can run in the background
without any human intervention at
all. Automation rules and scheduled
processes bring even more efficiency and
free up treasurers’ time for other tasks.
Machine learning/AI
Many see great potential in machine
learning/AI for cash management. Cash
flow forecasting in particular could
benefit from supervised learning.
With the potential to store and collect
huge amounts of data in the cloud,
comes the potential to use this data to
“teach” machines. Yet, many follow-up
questions remain unanswered. How
do you deal with the fact that client
data cannot simply be combined at
will, limiting potentially large amounts
of data to comparatively small silos in
terms of machine learning input? Is it
really that valuable to feed unstructured
information into a machine?
Real-time account information
through APIs
API technology has been another
gamechanger in how information is made
accessible. It enables t wo systems to
communicate directly, and this information,
for example real-time account statements
and intraday account balance information
as soon as money is credited to or debited
from an account, could be processed and
responded to in real time. Treasurers could
trigger information directly and take a
huge step towards an “instant treasury.”
They can also benefit from an API interface
to SAP for real-time account statement
import. Add WebSocket interfaces,
and you even rule out redundant data
communication.
The cash
management
process of today
and tomorrow
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