TOMATO CATCH-UP: Newsletter Issue 149 - May 2012
We at Tomato are celebrating our 20th anniversary. We’re all grown up, having added twenty years of experience thanks to the challenges presented by our clients. It’s amazing considering where we started: with lots of enthusiasm, confidence in our knowledge and experience, a vision of what treasurers need, and a tiny budget. How much the corporate world has changed since 1992! Remember the technology we thought at the time to be awesome and so full of promise? Did we actually think that working life would be simpler and less stressful with all the fancy tools?
Those of you who have been with us for many years and those who have found us more recently, thanks for sticking with us! Together, we can share the road to success and persevere!
Also, how do you like our new format? The new title and in html?
Enjoy!
Martin Schneider and the Tomato Team
In Today's Issue:
- Risiko Banken Monitor – auch Banken sind Lieferanten und Provider
- Cash Flow Forecasting: Human Factor too often Overlooked
- Neue WiFi Spezifikation IEEE 802.11-2012
- ACH Payment Volume Grows to 20 Billion in 2011
- Financial Supply Chain: Blogs and Survey Results
- Risk Management: What about Strategic Risks?
- BI and Analytics Are only as Good as the Users
- BYOD: Hidden Cost and Security Risks
CAREER AND MANAGEMENT
Risiko Banken Monitor – auch Banken sind Lieferanten und Provider
Von Martin Schneider
Allgemeine Banken-Ratings reagieren langsam und spät. Corporate Treasuries überwachen die Bonität ihrer Hausbanken regelmäßig auch auf Grundlage von Marktindikatoren. Vor allem Corporates mit Netto-Liquidität und hohem Eigenkapital stellten immer wieder fest, wie wenig Eigenkapital ihre Banken aufwiesen.
Seit Sommer 2011 führen wir mit unseren Klienten das Thema Banken Kontrahenten Risiko durch. Sie erinnern sich bestimmt an die hohen CDS spreads in den letzten Quartalen in 2011!
Unser Vorgang hat sich etabliert und bestätigt . Die gemeinsam erstellten Berichte enthalten das Rating und die CDS, und sie zeigen gleichzeitig das investierte Kapital bei der Hausbank auf einen Blick auf einer A4 Seite zusammenfasst.
Wenn wir über den Gartenzaun sehen, machen unsere Kollegen Ähnliches. Ein gutes Beispiel ist Schwabe, Ley und Greiner, die im Artikel Frühwarnsystem: Credit Default Swap (CDS) Spreads als ‘Frühwarnsystem’ ihren Vorgang beschreiben. (Details...)
Cash Flow Forecasting: Human Factor too often Overlooked
In last month’s newsletter we featured two articles on improving cash flow forecasting. They stemmed from contributors of a software company and an independent software and consulting firm. This month, gtnews features “Improve Cash Flow Forecasting and Liquidity Management” by Lisa Rossi of Deutsche Bank, so being from a bank, it offers a different focus.
The best starting point is for treasurers to re-evaluate their fundamental and long-standing data-management practices and technical capabilities. They need a system that gives them a comprehensive view of company transaction data on a single platform that is customized to their individual needs, suggests Rossi.
In the future, the process needs to have added capability without extra complexity; it needs to combine ease-of-use and “the ability to view a consolidated liquidity position across regions, currencies and banking relationships, and improve the accuracy of cash forecasting and risk management,” Rossi further suggests.
(Full story: registration required, free...)
Martin’s
Comment:
What we miss in these articles on forecasting is the human factor. Based on our
experience in coaching local finance staff, it is often difficult to include
the new process into their daily work. Professional treasury staff in the group
treasury adopt new processes easily but local people need time and coaching.
Two considerations:
- New software disturbs an existing process. Often, only some months after roll-out can old software be replaced or processes be adapted. It is simply too easy to install a new software.
- Most of us in finance are extremely detail-oriented and introverts. When forecasting we act as accountants and try to quantify the future. Liquidity planning is a guess though, so it needs some extravert brain cells. From our experience, it’s better make a guess and enter a rounded number than to calculate and spend hours of forecasting the future by cents.
Neue WiFi Spezifikation IEEE 802.11-2012
Das Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) hat die Neufassung des WLAN-Standards IEEE 802.11-2012 bekannt gegeben. Der neue Standard unterstützt mehr Netzwerkstandards und Geräte und sorgt für mehr Sicherheit und eine höhere Servicequalität (Quality of Service, QoS). Er verspricht ausserdem eine bessere Weitergabe von Gesprächen und Daten in höherer Geschwindigkeit in verschiedene Mobilfunknetze. (Details...)
ACH Payment Volume in Grows to 20 Billion in 2011
The Electronic Payment Association (NACHA) reported that total ACH payment volume of over 20 billion transaction is up 4.35 percent from 2010.
Reasons for the steady growth include the higher use of native electronic payments (payments which start as an electronic payment), higher online payments by consumers, and increased use of the ACH Network for vendor payments and business-to-business transactions.
- Native electronic payments increased 5.31 % over 2010.
- CIE (consumer-initiated entries) transactions grew 13.35 % year-over-year.
- Consumer-initiated entries transactions rose about 13%.
- Direct ACH debit payments authorized through the Internet or a mobile device increased more than 9% and made up about 16.7% of the total network volume.
- As for business-to-business transactions, CTX transactions grew by almost 13% and CCD transactions rose almost 5% from 2010
Financial Supply Chain: Blogs and Survey Results
Top Ten Wholesale Banking Trends in 2012
In a blog, published on Feb. 7, 2012 Enrico Camerinelli, a senior analyst for corporate banking, forecasts ten banking trends. (Full story: registration required, free)
2011 Financial Supply Chain Survey
gtnews’ latest financial supply chain survey reveals that a large number of 'breakage' events keep causing chains to fall apart. It’s something that could be prevented with better forecasting, planning and risk management.
Risk management still tops most corporate agendas, while forecasting and planning also present major challenges. The article “Corporates Focus on Increasing Ownership and Liquidity, Minimising Risk” looks at survey's results and puts them in context. It’s supplemented with graphs that make skimming for those with little time easy. (Full story: registration required, free)
Risk Management: What about Strategic Risks?
Risk management focuses predominantly on operational, compliance and financial risks. According to the CFO Magazine article “How to Direct a Risk Team”, CFOs may have to adjust focus.
Alix Stuart, a contributing editor at CFO.com reports the results of a Booz & Co. study of 1,200 large companies over a five-year period which found that “more than 60% of [shareholder] value lost over the last decade has been attributable to strategic risks, like being in the wrong market with the wrong product.”
Few CFOs who direct risk management programs would consider the “What product in what market?” question as falling in the risk domain, but they should. The article presents reactions from CFOs about the study and step-by-step details on how to build a risk team. (Full story...)
BI and Analytics Are only as Good as the Users
In the article “Putting People First”, in CFO Magazine, David Rosenbaum explains why BI and analytics are only as good as their users.
Gartner ranked next-generation analytics as one or the top 10 strategic technologies for 2012. They identify analytics as being embedded in technology, forward looking and drawn from many diverse sources of unstructured information systems.
Companies have lots of data and there are many tools. However, starting with data doesn’t work, says Rosenbaum. He advocates the counsel of Johnathan L.S. Byrnes, senior lecturer at MIT and author of Islands of Profit in a Sea of Red Ink: “Start by asking what the company should be doing, then reach into the data box and last apply analytics.” (Full story...)
BYOD: Hidden Cost and Security Risks
Bring-your-own device (BYOD) programs have advantages and drawbacks. Employees are happy being able to use their own device because it lets them blend their personal and professional lives in a single device. BYOD programs also relieve companies out of the “purchasing game”. The drawbacks involve risks, management headaches and hidden cost to support BYOD employee.
In the CIO.com article The BYOD Troubleshoot: Security and Cost-Savings, Tom Kaneshige, explains that BYOD programs involve a combination of technology and policy. He offers examples and advice from experts for CIOs. The article was tweeted 250+ times. (Full story...)
Treasurers! Socializing Is Important
It’s not enough for treasurers to be almost exclusively oriented toward the technical side of the job. Being focused on relationships and contributing as a senior business leader is equally important.
The article “Treasurers, Socialise More Often!” in the 08/2012 issue of the Eurotreasurer newletter, advises that finance professionals need to establish good relationships with other functions in order to get valuable input from their colleagues. It also helps to negate the treasury department’s image as an island that other departments only go to when they have a specific question.
(Full story in issue 08|2012...)
Eight Core Beliefs of Great Managers
The eight core beliefs of extraordinary bosses described in an article in inc.com illustrate how these managers view the workplace, the company and team dynamics.
Geoffrey James, a blogger and award-winning author found these common beliefs based on interviews with exceptionally successful CEOs over the years. The core beliefs include:
- Business is an ecosystem, not a battlefield.
- A company is a community, not a machine.
- Management is service, not control.
- My employees are my peers, not my children.
- Motivation comes from vision, not from fear.
- Change equals growth, not pain.
- Technology offers empowerment, not automation
- Work should be fun, not mere toil.
From the Desk of Regula Spottl,
Greensboro, North Carolina
MySwitzerland’s online marketing is so good that I just need to share it.
A funny sketch on YouTube, posted by the website MySwitzerland, features two elderly Swiss farmers mocking the country for its reputation in the outside world. It’s a brilliant online marketing campaign that works. Since its initial posting, the Swiss tourism board is increasingly cited as a leader in the world of digital and social marketing for destinations.
Full story “Switzerland fast becoming the darling of tourism marketing”
Watch the video (on the right)
Your Tomato
Regula Spottl