EuroFinance

A global cybersecurity leader that provides cloud-delivered protection of endpoints, cloud workloads, identity and data, CrowdStrike has seen its revenue increase by two-fold while cash & cash equivalents climbed from just over $250 million in January 2020 just before the pandemic to over $2 billion as of April 2022.

Due to the tremendous increase in volumes, locations, currencies and complexities, the company needed solutions that could be implemented quickly and scale treasury alongside the growing company.

“Implementing a treasury management system (TMS) seemed to be the obvious solution to help automate cash management processes” said Priti Kartik, senior director, treasury at CrowdStrike.

“However, even if we managed to secure the IT resources, which were already stretched to the limits to cope with the corporate growth, traditional TMS systems have a long lead time for implementation – a luxury we simply could not afford” Kartik continued.

Standing out from the “crowd”

For CrowdStrike, this meant that the treasury team would have to carve its own path and it needed a process which could fulfil the aspirations of a scalable and automated treasury.

While evaluating different options, partnering with fintechs emerged as a plausible solution as they offered a platform with core cash management functions, visibility and advanced analytics that could make an immediate impact. 

“We knew that moving towards disruptive technologies would revolutionise our processes – but it is still a new path vs. choosing traditional treasury management systems.” Kartik told EuroFinance.

Value creation

The company chose an open banking enterprise fintech platform and by linking it with its banks’ direct API connectivity, the treasury team was able to gain full visibility of its entire $2B+ cash balances in less than a month.

More importantly, this was achieved with minimal IT involvement while the implementation costs were negligible as compared to legacy TMS proposals.

Additionally, the shift of daily cash positioning duties from the accounting team to the treasury function added to Treasury’s credibility and relevance within CrowdStrike, “we are now seen as a strategic partner” Kartik further said.

Better decisions with analytics

“The timing could not have been better. As the Fed began aggressively increasing the interest rates, we were able to view cash balances real time, analyse weekly trends of the inflows and outflows, and by overlaying our interest income projections, we were able to make informed and data-backed decisions for managing cash and investments” Kartik continued.

Furthermore, the tool’s data mining and ML capabilities have harmonised and automatically detect anomalous movements in transactions in a user-friendly way for the treasury team to decipher and analyse, thereby mitigating risks which previously were virtually impossible to identify due to huge volume of transactions and asymmetry in data outputs by different banks.

CrowdStrike’s pathway to digital transformation can be emulated by many other companies, irrespective of the size of the team and access to resources. By working with partners that are democratising access to digital transformation, treasury teams can further innovate their company’s strategy and processes without outward reliance. Leaner, less-resourced treasury teams can now be on the cutting edge of innovation in this function.

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CrowdStrike won the EuroFinance Treasury Excellence award in the digital transformation/ technology implementation category and its Senior Director for corporate treasury, Priti Kartik will be speaking at the upcoming EuroFinance International Treasury Management Vienna conference in September 2022.