Posted by Noel Shannon on Tue, Oct 09, 2012 @ 08:08 AM
Most Business Managers I have talked to in the last few years tell me that they usually rely on extracting data from their Business systems and transferring them to spreadsheets for further analysis and manipulation in order to help them make business decisions that will effect chage in their organisation.
There are a number of issues that immediately arise with this approach. First, spreadsheets are notoriously inaccurate and prone to error - recent surveys have indicated that 85% of all spreadsheets in use in businesses have mistakes. As the caption implies, it is very easy to make a huge mistake by simply forgetting a symbol in a calculation formula, or by applying a formula to the wrong cell. Second - it is very hard to share spreadsheets - it is too easy to change someone else's calculations or mess them up by adding or changing the contents of a cell. This results in confusion as to who has the right version before any meaningful discussion can take place. Thirdly, they can get very complex - recently a customer told me that when they changed this years' spreadsheets that somehow last years were also changed - even though they though that there was no linkage. A fourth issue is to do with visualisation - whereas spreadsheets are great with numbers it is very difficult to build and maintain decent dashboards and visual metrics to show trends over time. Finally the biggest problem is time - everyone will confirm that the amount of time it takes to exrtract data from transactional systems is a definite burden on their staff and can often result in missed opportunities to change before it is too late.
Other areas where spreadsheets are weak relate to security, multi-user access, audit trails and compliance, e.g Sarbanes Oxley, where transparency and regulatory compliance are major driving forces for improvement in Reporting systems generally. There are many stories about executive meetings where the first 10 minutes are spent trying to decide who has the correct version of the spreadsheet with the latest data.
For these reasons we are seeing a significant trend away from spreadsheets and towards Reporting Systems that will provide solutions to all these issues. It would be better to have your reports directly integrated with your ERP systems for example, and at the same time collect data from any other relevant source for immediate presentation to all your decision makers. This is not as big a challenge as you might think, or as expensive.
Business Intelligence Systems have a reputation for being expensive and slow to implement. In response to this - QlikPower have introduced a series of Ready-To-Go BI apps that will integrate with the most popular ERP systems and deliver immediate analysis of all the transactional data in these systems. These apps provide an excellent starting point for implementing BI and can easily be augmented to take in data from other systems. Known as The 'Q Series' they also have a Cloud implementation option with all the associated benefits of that medium.
The Q Series
Posted by Noel Shannon on Mon, Jun 13, 2011 @ 04:39 AM
The recent financial crisis has clearly demonstrated that treasury departments are extremely important when it comes to dealing with the crisis and ensuring companies get through the recession in good shape. This is because a treasury department that functions well can ensure a company remains liquid and solvent during turbulent times. However, in the aftermath of the banking crisis, only a few companies seem to be investing more in people and resources for their treasury departments despite the crucial role these departments played during the recession.
While the financial crisis might have demonstrated how
important treasury departments are, the results of this survey clearly show that not all companies seem to have learned lessons from the recent recession with very few investing more in corporate treasury. In total, 80% of those surveyed said that their boards were paying more attention to and expecting more from their treasury operations, but more than 95% of Belgian treasurers said that there had been hardly any increase in the treasury department’s budget following the crisis.
“Corporate treasury teams need to take the opportunity to push themselves to the forefront,” said a Treasury Consulting Partner. “Quite a lot of treasurers said they still had problems getting additional investment and were having to contend with the impact of sharp movements in commodity prices and fluctuations in FX rates. The financial crisis has shed light on the added value provided by corporate treasury departments. Yet treasury departments are generally small specialist teams, with few people and insufficient resources.”
It is vital that businesses implement treasury best practices so that they are better equipped in the event of another crisis. “One possible explanation is that all too often senior management still see treasury operations as a cost centre and fail to recognise sufficiently how much added value they provide.”
That’s where cloud computing is assisting treasury managers achieve industry best practice, without the crippling capital expenditure costs. SaaS technology (Software as a service) reduces costs and improves scalability for all businesses. TGold treasury management system gives the treasury manager a secure, reliable and cost effective alternative to large expensive treasury deployments and traditional spreadsheets.
Visit our site and download a TGold treasury management system brochure.
Alternatively check out our Free 30 day trial with special incentives to sign up in June
This survey is from the ‘PwC Global Treasury Survey 2010: Can the crisis make treasury stronger?’
Posted by Noel Shannon on Fri, Jun 03, 2011 @ 03:58 AM
Investors, directors and other stakeholders look to the CFO to make sure that the company achieves its targets on time and more importantly without undue risk. When the economy enters recession, banking covenants are in danger of being breached, growth targets are unlikely to be achieved and lapses occur in regulatory compliance or best practice; the CFO’s role become even more prominent.
There are some distinct challenges facing CFO’s in this fine balancing act;
The solutions – A solid strategy is key, applying the principles that have worked for other successful companies. Using industry best practice. CFO’s need to be creative to find resources, justifying costs of procuring a solution to improve company efficiency.
Regulate, regulate, regulate – A major challenge to CFO’s is time management, as they comply with regulation. It can be a minefield to supervise reporting standards, controls (Sarbanes-Oxley), corporate governance, the Companies Act 2006 and the environment. The best results are often obtained by learning to balance the outcomes required by the business with the requirements of the regulations, by being flexible and identifying a solution to manage your time and resource effectively.
These are momentous times – everyone is facing situations that are tremendously difficult and may have far-reaching implications for their organisation and themselves. It’s imperative CFO’s continue to seek solutions to the most seemingly-intractable problems.
That’s where cloud computing is assisting today’s CFO align their practices with industry standards, without the crippling capital expenditure costs. SaaS technology (Software as a service) reduces costs and improves scalability for all businesses. TGold treasury management system gives the CFO a secure, reliable and cost effective alternative to large expensive treasury deployments and traditional spreadsheets.
Visit our site and download a TGold treasury management system brochure.
Alternatively check out our Free 30 day trial with special incentives to sign up in June
Posted by Noel Shannon on Thu, Jun 02, 2011 @ 03:20 AM
“Treasury Management System ” (TMS) is a term for a software package (often with lots of hardware also) that specializes in the automation of manually-intensive, repetitive steps needed to manage a company’s cash flows. The system allows a company to efficiently communicate with financial institutions in order to manage cash, transactions, forecasts, FX, and even investments and debt. It’s critical for most companies today in managing their audit trails. The financial crisis has heightened the need for better transparency into a company's cash positions. Visibility to IR, FX or Money Market transactions, no matter the size of the organisation is key to adhering to best practice regulatory processes.
Can I afford a TMS?
The global markets are fraught with uncertainty and caution. We have witnessed several large financial institutions collapse, experienced the scarcity of tightened credit, stressed over increase of liquidity risk and hurt by the exposures to fluctuating currencies. There needs to be stricter and better controls, quicker access to information, and transparency within companies. Financial Controllers need real-time access to information, system integration, and consolidated global reporting capabilities with the ability to create on demand reports for senior management. Excel spreadsheets have their place but are manual and risk prone. Companies must open their eyes to the need for treasury solutions. In short, many of these growing businesses are striving to remain competitive with their competitors abroad already utilising modern treasury management solutions and more effective regulatory processes.
You can’t afford not to be looking at solutions that will assist your company in reducing its operational risk!
The problem in the past has been cost for many small to medium enterprises, and quite a few large ones also. That’s where cloud computing is assisting today’s financial controller and treasury manager to align their companies practices with industry standards, without the crippling capital expenditure bill. Software as a service reduces costs and improves scalability for all businesses.
TGold treasury management system is giving a secure, reliable and cost effective alternative to company treasurers and financial controllers the world over.
Visit our site and download a TGold treasury management system brochure
Alternatively check out our Free 30 day trial with special incentives to sign up in June
Posted by Noel Shannon on Wed, Jun 01, 2011 @ 03:01 AM
A recent industry survey identified 37 of the 54 Financial Controllers polled pointed to FX as their largest concern in the area of risk. Perhaps the most difficult aspect of hedging foreign exchange risk for corporations is having visibility into their exposures. This is a common issue for companies worldwide where treasurers are often unable to source exposure information from company systems. Instead, they must depend on informal communications from the departments where FX exposures originate, or rely on their banks to fuel them with this information. As organisations begin to expand their international operations, use of web capabilities linked to a treasury management system can help business units receive timely information on forecasted exposures.
Corporations that are operating in different locations with disparate business practices, controls and systems are often challenged by trying to ensure that the business is adequately protected against error and fraud and that policies and procedures are being observed uniformly. If a corporate treasurer does not have all of the right information in one place, the probability of risk going unmanaged increases and the quality of decisions made based on this information may be compromised. A specialised treasury management system (TMS) can help by putting into place effective controls that can aid treasurers in making better-informed business decisions.
As with many regions throughout the world, the tightening regulatory environment has put treasurers under greater pressure to ensure compliance. Treasury management solutions can establish consistency of data and processes throughout the organisation and thereby promote compliance with initiatives such as Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) and Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX).
Visit our site and download a brochure of TGold treasury management system
Alternatively check out our Free 30 day trial with special incentives to sign up in June
Posted by Noel Shannon on Fri, Apr 29, 2011 @ 04:39 AM
For many corporate treasury departments reliance on spreadsheets is still a common practice today. The problem is, these manual methods are highly inefficient, error prone, and costly. Manually inputting or processing data (which typically involves pulling in data from many different sources) is a drain on valuable time of employees who are required to re-key the same information into multiple spreadsheets or systems. Data entry errors on spreadsheets also put companies at risk as they can lead to inaccurate cash positioning and forecasting.
Technology helps treasurers to construct policies and procedures that support the company in a globally competitive market, and assists them to take advantage of greater automation and best industry practices to ensure that resources are engaged in a value-added manner. Regardless of company size this is important. With a single centralised platform, corporations can achieve better connectivity to banks and other trading partners, establish consistent controls and audit capabilities and obtain a global view of information, regardless of how widely dispersed their operations.
That’s where cloud computing is assisting SME’s to align their practices with industry standards, without the crippling capital expenditure costs. Software as a service reduces costs and improves scalability for all businesses. TGold treasury management system offers a secure, reliable and cost effective alternative to traditional spreadsheets for financial controllers and company treasurers.
Visit our site and download a brochure of TGold treasury management system
Alternatively check out our Free 30 day trial with special incentives to sign up in June
Posted by Noel Shannon on Thu, Apr 28, 2011 @ 09:04 AM
Although Sarbanes-Oxley (also called Section 404) was developed for large corporations mainly to ‘clean up’ their act, its core message is relevant to all businesses with basic corporate governance requirements. The legalisation is mainly a control for ensuring common sense and proper judgements are applied in business transactions. The necessity came from large scale accounting scandals but the lessons are relevant to any business operating multiple transactions across multiple currencies.
The key area for concern for senior executives and MD’s is the requirement to assert tightened controls internally and transparency in reporting requirements.
Annual reports include an assessment by the company's external auditor regarding whether their systems and financial reporting procedures are capable of providing accurate and complete financial statements.
In a CFO magazine survey, only 11% of 245 CFOs said that spreadsheet-based control reporting was accurate enough to make senior executives confident about certifying their company's' financial data, as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires.
For the 89% (and other 11%) of the CFO's, we recommend adopting stronger internal controls and using a software built, tested and documented for treasury transactions.
Treasury Management Systems can be the solution for companies, whether they are required to be Sarbanes-Oxley compliant or they just want industry best practice. Compliance is a concern, but invariably audit trails also eliminate errors, enable smarter quicker decisions and can improve transaction efficiencies.
Do you want a Treasury Management System that's affordable, reliable and compliant?
If the answer is YES…then you will be pleased to hear that the advent of TGold in the cloud removes ALL of the overhead associated with in-house solutions. These cost factors are no longer a deterrent to adopting a best practice solution.
Visit our site and download a brochure of TGold treasury management system
Alternatively check out our Free 30 day trial with special incentives to sign up in June
