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Boost your global payments
and receivables IQ
So much is happening in the world of corporate treasury that it can sometimes
be hard for the treasurer to know where to focus their efforts. In this article, we
examine why global payments and receivables deserve some extra attention,
and outline practical steps and solutions to help treasurers on the path
to optimisation.
In the search for growth, corporates continue to expand their operations across the globe. This is
not limited to Western companies looking to Asia and Africa; emerging markets companies are also
spreading their wings towards the developed markets. The potential benefits and opportunities in
each market may differ, but the overall globalisation challenge is the same: any corporate expanding
its global footprint must do so in a streamlined manner, whilst remaining connected to their end
markets. Otherwise, they risk top line gains being eroded by process and structural inefficiencies.
“For corporate treasurers, this means embracing centralisation and rationalisation to ensure an
optimal payments and receivables global set-up,” says Ireti Samuel-Ogbu, EMEA Head of Payments
and Receivables, Treasury and Trade Solutions, Citi. The first step on this centralisation and
rationalisation journey, she says, should be the establishment of a shared service centre (SSC) –
something which is not new, but is most definitely evolving.
The new shared services model
“But don’t be fooled into thinking that this is a ‘lift and shift’ exercise of yesteryear,” notes John
Murray, EMEA Head of Corporate and Public Sector Cash Sales, Treasury and Trade Solutions,
Citi. “As corporates get smarter about cutting costs, delivering value and reducing risks against a
backdrop of geopolitical and market uncertainty, they are putting a lot of time and energy into
deriving financial and control benefits through optimising their SSCs.”
Take the example of Mondelez International, one of the world’s largest snacks companies, which
streamlined its treasury and business services to release resources within its European Business
Services Centre (EBSC) to focus on more value-adding tasks. The EBSC faced challenges in working
with multiple banking providers and using multiple electronic banking channels. These arrangements
were complex, leading to high levels of banking fees and resource-intensive supporting functions and
limiting the ability to take advantage of improved banking technologies.
With the help of Citi, the Mondelez International treasury team embarked on an ambitious ‘One
Bank’ project in order to bring simplicity, consistency and transparency to treasury operations –
with the goal of rationalising the number of accounts it held and to reduce its overhead variable
costs. In addition to collaborating with just one bank across the entire European region, the company also wanted to move to a
bank-agnostic delivery channel and a single global file format, namely ISO XML.
“As the Mondelez International case highlights, the greatest levels of optimisation and rationalisation are being achieved by those
corporates prepared to go ‘under the hood’ of their SSC and really challenge the status quo,” says Hemant Gada, EMEA Head of
Channel and Enterprise Services, Treasury and Trade Solutions, Citi.
Doing it in-house
Taking this rationalisation drive one step further, in-house banks (IHBs) are also becoming increasingly popular among forward-
thinking corporates. Rather than taking a payments factory approach (where each subsidiary retains its own bank account), the SSC
model is evolving towards a very streamlined or even single account approach, thanks to the IHB.
Ireti Samuel-Ogbu
EMEA Head of Payments and
Receivables, Treasury and
Trade Solutions
Hemant Gada
EMEA Head of Channel and
Enterprise Services, Treasury
and Trade Solutions
John Murray
EMEA Head of Corporate and
Public Sector Cash Sales,
Treasury and Trade Solutions
in association with
treasurytoday
Adam Smith Awards © August 2015 | 9