Treasury & Cash Management

Treasury and Cash Management continues to evolve as a very strategic and critical function within the enterprise. While many companies are moving to new technologies to help manage the increasing flow of data and the importance of treasury and cash management, spreadsheets remain the tool of choice. In fact, according to a recent HSBC survey, 79% of companies polled still use spreadsheets in their cash management and treasury functions and 42% still rely on manual spreadsheet forecasts, something with which 80% are dissatisfied.

Talk to any treasurer, controller or CFO, and you will unearth an abiding faith in Excel as a reliable, easy-to-use workhorse – one that seems to withstand attack from all manner of technological innovations. The reason is simple – Excel is hands-on and leaves the executive feeling in control of the numbers he or she is crunching. While some larger companies have adopted enterprise-wide point solutions, spreadsheets are still the main tool for collecting inputs and distributing reports for these systems. Spreadsheets are also the main analytical tool used by finance where work is done outside of the core systems of record. Even though Microsoft ® Excel is still the single most important tool in treasury and cash management, it remains largely a desk-top individual tool that is not enterprise quality and does not promote collaboration—either internally or across business units.

The Boardwalk Collaboration Platform (BCP) is built using what you already use today—spreadsheets. With BCP, you can easily migrate your existing manual spreadsheet-based process into an enterprise quality, collaborative system. Unlike point solutions which often make you change your process to fit a rigid software architecture, only BCP lets your company fully leverage your existing process and business logic while retaining the renowned flexibility of Excel.

Treasury and Cash Management challenges

Consolidating information from multiple systems from various locations in order to develop a rolled up cash forecast or reconciliation is time consuming and puts the enterprise at risk if the information is either corrupt or not accurate

Collaborating on Treasury and Cash management information has traditionally been done by emailing spreadsheets between process participants. While the flexibility of spreadsheets makes modeling business logic parameters easy, sharing this logic and collaborating on this data using email is not efficient, not secure, and not accurate

Timing is critical when managing working capital. Using manual methods of collecting data and waiting for participants to deliver information so decisions can be made is no longer optimal. Immediate visibility of all data is core to managing and maintaining a world-class treasury and cash management function

Your enterprise is dynamically changing on a daily basis. The need to have a flexible system to keep up with these changes is paramount to success. Being locked into a rigid system where few people have access and making changes as your environment changes creates means more IT expense and more work. These distractions take you and your team away from your core daily jobs of making decisions and being pro-active about managing the core assets of the business

The Boardwalktech Solution: BCP-Driven Treasury and Cash Management

The Boardwalk Collaboration Platform solution for Treasury and Cash Management lets you develop an enterprise quality “single version of the truth” for all your spreadsheet-based forecasting, reporting and analytical data. At the same time, BCP lets you retain the flexibility and power of Excel’s business modeling environment on the desktop which is essential to a successful treasury and cash management system.

Fully leverage and continue to use your existing Excel-based treasury and cash management worksheets

A single, secure version of your data provides a complete cell-level audit trail, change history, and comprehensive access control for your sensitive data which greatly reduces risk and moves these processes into a compliant risk managed environment

Seamlessly share data changes between your system(s) of record and your spreadsheet-driven cash and treasury management processes

Automatically distribute, consolidate, and report information across multiple levels within the organization directly from within Excel

Take treasury and cash management data offline and work in isolation, then automatically synchronize your changes with other participants in the process

Within Excel, see changes at the cell-level as you collaborate with other participants. All changes are automatically versioned by BCP which means you can compare changes between versions directly in Excel

Benefits of using BCP for Treasury and Cash Management

Since BCP is built upon and uses the familiar Excel environment, adoption is rapid, training is minimal, and the investment in capturing your existing treasury and cash management processes is preserved

Automating the collaboration and consolidation process means cycle times are reduced freeing up employees to focus on activities which improve operational results

Extend your processes to more participants since users can work in isolation using Excel on the desktop and submit their changes when ready to commit. These users do not need to be connected directly to expensive and difficult to learn applications or systems of record

Insure reliable data throughout your process by leveraging BCP’s enterprise quality, access-controlled, compliant single version of the truth for all treasury & cash management data

Eliminate the confusion of trying to gain visibility into and understand what’s changed in your spreadsheet-based data across multiple versions using BCP’ unique cell-level change management and audit trail

Reporting data is updated in real-time at the cell-level versus having to email new versions as changes are made, thus giving you immediate notice of changes so better decisions can be made
Develop dashboards on the fly to capture and report to management or specific teams and individuals data changes within each process so everyone has a clear view of the current status