TOMATO CATCH-UP - Newsetter Issue 189 – January 2016

Your monthly resource on working capital, process optimization and issues relating to the world of corporate treasurers, IT professionals and bankers!

This newsletter is multi-lingual, English, German and French depending on the source.

Introduction:

The beginning of the year is a perfect time to review the main concerns you face and projects to deal with them. Some issues have probably been simmering and can no longer be avoided. Some are fuzzy and need clarification. There’s also a chance that you’re missing important cues. Asking “what robs bosses, co-workers, and others who depend on you of sleep?” helps identifying those issues. For any problem you need to deal with, ask Martin Schneider for a discussion that will clarify it. Contact Martin via email or call 044 814 2001.

Enjoy the variety of topics that have been in the news in January and December!

Regula Spottl

Topics

Tomato’s 2015 Highlights and Trends

More than ever before, we assisted corporates in replacing, updating and writing new treasury manuals/policies. This came about as result of the Swiss National Bank decision in January 2015.

Evaluation und later implementation of payment gateways between ERP, SAP and TMS was and remains a project many clients deal with. The German Ebics and Swiss FTX systems are easy solutions. Our consulting and implementations involved primarily the evaluation of gateways to Eastern Europe, Asia and the American continent.

Based on our expertise with such projects, we evaluate bank connections (gateways) on their longevity, cost and user-friendliness and then choose SWIFT, EBICS, or Host-to-host.

The evaluation also involves gathering information form the involved daughter companies about their management of vendor, client and HR-payments in volume, transaction, banks and costs. Our questionnaire helps pinpointing key variables and decision-making throughout the process.

Brown-bag-lunches in various cities of Switzerland were again popular as they bring together colleagues that face similar issues. The key topic was/is Swiss EMIR solution, Finfrag and the new payment landscape in Switzerland until 2020.

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Project Management Success

In mid- and large corporations, project management is overall static, says Brad Egeland, a Business Solution Designer and IT/PM consultant, in his article Top 5 predictions for project management in 2016. Still, project management is important and often critical in organizations that rely on profitable and successful customer implementations in order to succeed as a company.”

Someone in the organization decides how projects are carried out. In the article Who decides your project management best practices?, Brad Egeland suggests that those at the top of the organization are not interested in what project management processes are used. They care that the projects get done well, keep clients happy and use technology that’s good for the business long-term.

The project teams are most directly affected by how projects are conducted and they depend on leaders who define general best practices that will be applied on most or all projects. “Then the team can fine tune those with each project client and your team for the engagement – within a reasonable range of acceptance – and apply those to each project.”

At any one time, organizations conduct several projects. When they are carried out independently, the organization runs the risk of several areas competing for “the same project resources, including people and technologies, and also conflicting deadlines and goals,” suggests Moira Alexander, a co-founder and director, information systems and technology advisory, at Conture Business Advisors. To avoid this pitfall, she describes 6 proven strategies for evaluating and prioritizing IT projects.

Working on a project often means “long lonely hours, hard work, endless challenges.” Also, a large percentage of IT project success is science. Still, there are many ways projects can be made exciting suggests David Cotgreave, Professional Services Director at Stoneseed.

We at Tomato have been working with clients in a variety of projects for over 25 years. Find out more about us in An overview of typical projects…, and what services we are specializing in and how we are doing them… Contact Martin Schneider with an issue you need to solve. Discussing it with you will help pinpoint the key criteria and scope for solving it. martin.schneider@tomato.ch or 044 814 2001

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SWIFT Launches Global Payments Innovation Initiative

Press release Dec. 10, 2015 – The global payments innovation initiative is designed to significantly improve customers’ experience in correspondent banking by increasing transparency, speed and predictability of cross-border payments.

The initiative will at first focus on a business-to-business payments service in early 2016.

Gottfried Leibbrandt, CEO, SWIFT said: “Correspondent banking serves the industry with millions of secure cross-border payments day in, day out; with this initiative we are building on those strengths, enabling banks to provide distinctive cross-border payments services and providing real benefits to end customers. This is a critical step in cross-border payments innovation.” Press release…

Martin first started implementing SWIFT at banks and in the last five years with corporates. With his long-term experience and knowledge, his assistance with SWIFT solutions makes your project run smoothly, efficiently and with a good return of investment.

Our illustration on how to execute local payments and view them at headquarters … (pdf)

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Gartner Studie: Beste ERP für Schweizer KMU

KMU können sich selten hochkomplexe Lösungen leisten und pflegen. Deswegen bevorzugen sie pragmatische Lösungen, die die anstehenden Aufgaben gut genug bewältigen.

KMUs haben oft Niederlassungen in mehrern Ländern, mit anderen Rechtssystemen, Steuerreglements, Währungen und Compliance Reglementen als im Haupstitz.

In einer Studie, haben die Analysten von Gartner sich auf ERP-Systeme konzentriert, die diesen Herausforderungen gewachsen sind. Sie haben Microsoft, SAP, Oracle, IFS, Infor, Sage und Epicor verglichen. Der Computerworld.ch Artikel Wer hat das beste ERP für Schweizer KMU? präsentiert die Stärken und Schwächen der Anbieter im Überblick.

Ihre ERP mit einer Treasury Lösung verbinden, sowie Ihre ERP mit den wichtigsten Banken anbinden erleichtert Ihnen Reporting und Financial Planning. Kontaktieren Sie Martin, um zu evaluieren einer Optimierung Ihrer Finanzflüsse zwischen ERP, Bank, Lieferanten- oder Kunden ERP-Systemen. martin.schneider@tomato.ch oder 044 814 2001

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Deloitte’s CIO Survey 2015: Schweiz im internationalen Vergleich

Die Schweiz gewinnt in Innovations Rankings immer wieder den 1. Platz. Die letzte Deloitte Studie hat jedoch ergeben, dass das nicht auf Schweizer CIOs zutrifft. Diese sind vorsichtig und konzentrieren sich vor allem auf einen hervorragenden IT-Service.

Ergebnisse des "CIO Survey 2015. Challenges and opportunities for the Swiss CIO":

Schweizer CIOs konzentrieren sich sehr stark auf einen exzellenten Service.
Innovation ist für sie wichtig; sie beachten sich jedoch nur am Rande dafür zuständig.
Sie setzen sich sehr intensiv mit Diensten aus der Public Cloud auseinander.
Für Schweizer CIOs ist eine höhere finanzielle Vergütung kein (starker) Anreiz.

Deloitte befragte von Juni bis August 2015 56 Schweizer CIOs und Senior IT Executives aus den Branchen Finance, Produktion, Dienstleistungen, Gesundheit und der öffentlichen Hand und verglich sie mit 700 CIOs aus 36 Ländern.

Computerworld besitzt ein Vorabexemplar der Studie und fasste sie im Artikel Wie gut schlagen sich Schweizer CIOs im internationalen Vergleich? Deloitte hat's herausgefunden zusammen.

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Swiss CFO Day 2016, 13.1.2016 in Zug

Der siebte Swiss CFO Day, organisiert vom CFO Forum Schweiz, findet am 13. Januar 2016 im Casino Zug statt. Das Thema is “Wettbewerbsfähigkeit – Swiss Made”.

Zum Thema “Wettbewerbsfähigkeit von Schweizer Unternehmen” wird Dr. Fritz Zurbrügg, Vizepräsident Schweizerische Nationalbank, Stellung nehmen. Ausgewiesene Persönlichkeiten werden ausserdem Stärken und Herausforderungen ihrer Unternehmen, welche Sachzwänge die Geldpolitik unterliegt, und wie es gelingt, Mitarbeitende zu Höchstleistungen zu motivieren, erklären.

Informationen und Anmeldung online…

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CFOs Newletter 4. Quartal 2015

Das CFO Forum Schweiz behandelt in ihrem Newsletter IV/2015 die folgenden Themen:

Economic Outlook 2016
Entwicklungen in Rechnungslegung und Erfolgskennzahlen von NPOs
25. CFO-Umfrage 3. Quartal 2015: Anzeichen einer Erholung?
Swiss CFO Day 2016 am 13. Januar 2016
M&A: Erfolg dank Integrationsmanagement
Wer macht das Rennen? Vorstellung von den 3 Kandidaten, die für den CFO of the Year Award nominiert sind.

Newsletter IV / 2015 in pdf via cfos.ch/

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EPC Outlines Real-Time Credit Transfers across SEPA

The European Payments Council (EPC) has published a proposal for a new pan-European instant credit transfer scheme, which will bring real-time money transfers across the single euro payment area (SEPA) region.

The plan for the instant credit transfer scheme, named SCT Inst, is expected to be adopted in November 2017. EPC’s announcement…

GTNews’ blog Countdown to 2017 launch for real-time credit transfers across SEPA offers a short overview.

Related to this is the article Express Payment Transfer in Denmark, to which we referred in April 2015. It describes Straksclearing, an initiative the Danish financial sector and Denmark's Nationalbank undertook to modernize the country’s payments infrastructure. The Straksclearing system enables express transfers of up to kr. 500,000 that can be made immediately 24/7/365.

Also, in the May 2015 newsletter we referred to SWIFT’s paper ‘The Global Adoption of Real-Time Retail Payments Systems', which draws attention to two key interlinked topics: the different adoption speeds and “the relationship with core drivers which are leading to the adoption of such systems.” The paper underlines its findings with various graphs and country-to-country details. Download a full copy of the research paper. (pdf 16 pages)

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Can Data Used for Decision-Making Be Trusted?

Companies are more and more basing decisions on data-driven facts. However, a study by KPMG found that more than half of organizations find it hard to evaluate the quality and reliability of the data.

The KPMG blog Can you trust your data? introduces “scientifically proven methods to evaluate the uncertainties of the answers data & analytics provide.”

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From the Desk of Regula Spottl, Greensboro, NC

North Carolina: Music, Writers, Foodies

In past reflections on North Carolina, my home state, I referred to bluegrass and jazz music with Doc Watson and John Coltraine as prime examples of the state’s culture. (am Ende der Newsletter)

NC also has a huge number of writers. For example, Hillsborough, population around 6,000 and about 45 minutes from Greensboro, is a quirky and charming town full of writers of the genre called Southern fiction. They congregate at coffee shops in town and present their books at Purple Crow Books.

Greensboro too has many writers in part thanks to an excellent creative writing program at UNCG, the local university. Scuppernong Books hosts at least twice a week writers who discuss their books and book lovers who join in on conversations over wine, beer or coffee. Guess where you find me often!

In addition, many, primarily women, are in book clubs where they discuss a book every month. This is one aspect of my life here that I cherish.

I’ll talk about foodies next time!

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