Le Magazine du Trésorier - n°62 - 2ème trimestre 2008 - (Page 26)

LA PAROLE AUX ANNONCEURS HOW TO MASTER GLOBAL CASH MANAGEMENT USING INTEGRATED SAP TREASURY SOLUTIONS In today’s environment Corporate Treasurers are challenged with unstable financial markets and a genuine liquidity crunch making it difficult to fund ongoing business needs. Next to that Treasurers need to deal with constantly changing financial business plans often as a result of current US recession threats and the economic shift from the western economies towards the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) area. In order to face these difficult times, a Corporate Treasury Center (TC) should be able to understand their business needs and deliver global treasury services to support business growth and protect company assets. Many TC are however often perceived to be on an island without full and timely visibility on the cash held on an affiliate level and thus not able to perform true Global Cash Management. The challenge to master Global Cash Management lies in understanding the different data sources needed for an accurate short-term cash position and medium to long term liquidity plan, and to process this data in the most straight-through way. These data sources are different per company but in general 5 major sources can be recognized : q q q q q manner. In order to close this gap there is a need for an integrated Treasury approach based on 4 key-elements: 1. Streamlining the communication with the local entities 2. Developing an internal bank structure 3. Straight Through Processing of disbursements 4. Treasury & Financial Supply Chain reporting In this article we will give you an overview on how the gap can be closed based on these key-elements using the latest SAP Treasury solutions. STREAMLINING THE COMMUNICATION WITH THE LOCAL ENTITIES As the local entities are the primary source of information to understand the business needs but are also an important customer of the Treasury Center, a maximum of value-added services should be offered to them - preferably via a secure and single point of access comparable to a custom-made web based banking solution. Based on the SAP NetWeaver platform, Treasury departments can offer web based applications and services, fully integrated with both the TMS and ERP system. Using this platform, remote subsidiaries are able to report forecasted disbursements or collections (either manual input or a download from the local ERP system). Subsidiaries should also be able to report their loans or investments agreed with a local bank, which combined with the reported forecasts and an upload of their local electronic bank statements, provides the TC with a real-time view on local cash availability. As a “Treasury customer “ affiliates can benefit from accurate exposure & liquidity forecasting as SAP can integrate online reporting via this web front-end, enabling subsidiaries to manage their internal FX or MM deals. Overall, a web portal should create a win-win situation for both parties where not only the TC provides realtime treasury services to the operating companies but Procure-to-pay (P2P) data Order to cash data Bank balances Incoming and outgoing Treasury movements Sales forecasts and Business plans The big issue in capturing the above mentioned data is the fact that this data is often fed by different source systems such as integrated or stand-alone ERP systems, Treasury management systems (TMS), electronic banking platforms or even excel spreadsheets managed by different entities. This makes it difficult for the TC to understand the affiliates daily liquidity needs and to manage overall net debt or excess cash in the most efficient and timely Le Magazine du Trésorier - N° 62

Table des matières de la publication Le Magazine du Trésorier - n°62 - 2ème trimestre 2008

COUVERTURE
SOMMAIRE
EDITORIAL
FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS
LA PAROLE À ... : HERMANN LANGE
DOSSIER
15 MINUTES AVEC...
LA PAROLE AUX ANNONCEURS
VIE DE L’ASSOCIATION
BRÈVES

Le Magazine du Trésorier - n°62 - 2ème trimestre 2008