The cash management field is seeing a growing convergence between once disparate product areas. Like many others, this trend is driven by two factors: market forces and improvements in technology. With the significant escalation of the treasurer’s role within a broader treasury remit, one of the key challenges is to make all of the organisation’s cash visible whatever the geographic diversity and to bring it quickly under more centralised control.
The need to mobilise internal cashflows may have been highlighted by the credit freeze, but the movement of travel pre-dates the credit market disruptions. Companies have been reassessing their cash strategies for some time and in many cases the result is investment in large restructuring projects. In the long run these projects are expected to add significant value.
One of the themes that emerged from the ACT Annual Conference in Manchester in April was that cash management and trade finance are increasingly important in treasury. As a result, the success of cash management projects can be a double-edged sword. As project success is acknowledged, so the expectation of even greater value add increases rather than decreases. Treasurers are going to have to continue to work hard to meet their organisations’ cash management ambitions.
