Pre-conference training course: Taming treasury technology | Tuesday September 20th
SaaS, APIs, RPA, AI/ML and more. New technology is enabling treasury staff to minimise time on processing and concentrate on adding value instead. However, poorly understood, bought or implemented technology doesn’t deliver the results wanted. It is, therefore, vital to understand the solutions available, the environment and plan ahead to identify and solve company needs correctly.
This intermediate-level course provides a holistic picture of treasury technology from a practitioner’s point of view, allowing attendees to design a technology strategy for the Treasury function or be prepared to optimise the introduction of already chosen technologies. Led by Nicholas Franck, a treasury professional with over 30 years’ global experience in treasury, banking and consulting.
By attending the course, attendees will:
- Have an overview of existing and new technologies relevant to the treasury department and some of the underlying enabling infrastructure and technologies
- Be aware that there are solutions, or can be solutions to their companies’ pain points
- Have a framework for identifying technology needs and constraints
- Structure a holistic approach from technology selection to implementation and beyond
- Be able to establish a strategy for their functions and companies on what to do, when and how
- Be more likely to implement effectively and know who needs to be involved and what roles these should have
- Gain credibility with their non-treasury management and peers through the display of technology knowledge and fact-based proposals
Who should attend?
- Mid- to senior-level executives who want/need to know about, at a high level, the different treasury technologies available and the benefits they bring. Also, how various technologies relate and integrate and the challenges to be overcome to implement and maintain them successfully over time.
- Executives who want to understand the consequences to their units of new technologies already being rolled out enterprise-wide.
- Executives at all levels who want to understand the current status and future directions in treasury technology
- Executives at all levels working on a treasury technology policy
- Professionals from IT and other functions who support treasury and need an overview of the treasury technology space and the changes happening in it
Introduction from the tutor and collection of the participants’ learning wishes
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Nicholas Franck
EuroFinance Tutor
Nicholas Franck
EuroFinance Tutor
September 20th 2022Nick is a treasury professional with over 30 years’ global experience in Treasury, Banking and Consulting. He studied Engineering at university and specialised in computing during his final year. His earliest jobs were hands-on with technology, building a dealing desk information management system and implementing a treasury management system. His responsibilities have grown since then to include technology strategy and implementation management whilst still remaining hands-on. He has been responsible for buying and implementing treasury technology, designing processes and controls, and maintaining and upgrading all of these over time. Examples include straight-through-processing integration with banks and advanced reporting tools. In addition, Nick has worked on non-treasury projects. These have given him practical knowledge of technology integration across business silos, which is now particularly relevant for cash forecasting, real-time reporting and dashboards. Nick’s combination of Treasury and business expertise, knowledge of technology, and deep interest in the subject make him an ideal tutor for this treasury technology course.
A general introduction to treasury technology
Treasury activities and where different technologies fit in
Vapourware and beneficial technology – The clients’ role
- The importance of identifying pain points precisely
- Having a clear strategy
- Practical implementation methods and stakeholder buy-in
The pace of change in today’s technology landscape and how to handle it
Applying 80:20 and ‘No blame’ project shifts in all aspects of project planning
Morning break
Review of established treasury technologies and infrastructure requirements
- On-premise TMSs
- Market information providers
- Some dealing platforms
- Systems integration
- Legacy reporting capabilities
Historical issues with the above
- No ‘perfect fit vs requirements
- Lots of manual work
- The difficulty of managing change
- Silo-based technology
- Extensive use of IT needed both upfront and over time
New technologies and how they address the issues
- SaaS
- Diversification of information providers
- APIs in systems integration
- Enterprise-wide provision of and access to data (data lakes and data warehouses)
- Analytics platforms and dashboards (‘Super’ Excel, Power BI, Tableau and more)
- Robotic process automation RPA
Lunch
Recap of the morning and participants’ comments
One framework for planning new technology introduction
- Avoiding the Tower of Babel – Importance of effective communication Bottom-Up and Diagonally [e.g., with other functions] as well as Top-Down to identify issues correctly and who needs to be involved, how, and during what steps
- Understanding XaaS and the acceleration of software development – Importance of keeping in touch with IT infrastructure and software-writing environmental changes
- Finalising issues and their prioritisation
- Creating a business case
- Shortlisting providers – Established providers and / versus new challengers – Strengths and weaknesses of each
- Understanding resource availability for new project implementation and tailoring a change approach aligned with these and the expected useful life of the technology
– Early-adopter versus laggard preferences
– Enterprise-wide vs silo only change
– Small-step / partial solution versus big step / complete solution change
– Data cleansing/ wrangling requirements – upfront and ongoing
– Order of implementation – front office or back office first
– Implementation methods – agile vs waterfall; 80:20 and ‘No blame’ project shift planning
– Planning for the discovery of new, better technologies and budget constraints –Flexible 60:40 mix-and-match vs 80:20 planning - Stakeholder buy-in, in writing
- Provider selection
- Stakeholder buy-in, in writing (gain!)
- Implementation
- Continuous review (bottom up, diagonally, top-down)
Afternoon break
Fintechs and the explosion of niche applications
- Examples of Fintechs – new payment methods, dynamic supply chain financing and investing, KYC, RegTech, ESG and more
- Stages of an entrepreneurial startup and increasing ease of application creation and funding – Relevance of this to Treasurers
- Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning and its immediate applications
- Distributed Ledger Technology/Blockchain and immediate applications
- Bitcoin, Digital currencies and Central Bank Digital Currencies
- Decentralised Finance (DeFi)
Future trends
- More of all of the previous applications, improved, plus: Natural Language Processing (NLP)
- Integrated multi-functional AI/ML
- Citizen developers and low code/no code
- New skills needed in Treasury
- Lack of availability of ‘true’ data scientists – ‘Call to Arms’ – Train Your Own!