The Future of Corporate Treasury

21 The Future of Corporate Treasury Today, Tomorrow and Beyond With exponential technology developing in so many areas simultaneously, treasurers may feel overwhelmed. To ensure they successfully take advantage of the opportunities available, they should devise different goals for different time horizons. Today – Optimize Treasury Processes In the short term (0-2 years), most organizations should continue to focus on standardization and automation using traditional technology such as ERP, TMS and electronic banking to optimize treasury processes. RPA technology should be considered to automate repetitive standardized workflows and connect multiple systems and users. Tomorrow – Leverage Data Intelligence In the medium term (3 to 5 years), the use of data will change: Instead of searching and analyzing patterns in historical data, descriptive, predictive and prescriptive analytics will be leveraged to provide suggestions on actions to be taken next. Structured and unstructured, as well as internal and external, data will be combined to deliver these insights. Beyond – Real-time Execution In the long term (beyond five years), incumbent banks will collaborate with fintechs to improve financial services (corporates do not want to manage the reputational or credit risk of an unknown startup) and move toward real-time execution. Big tech companies such as Google, Amazon and Facebook will play a key role in the open financial industry thanks to regulatory incentives such as PSD2, Open Banking and APIs. Already in China, two large aggregators (Tencent’s WeChat and Alibaba’s Alipay) have almost a billion app users. Final Remarks The treasury ecosystem is experiencing significant change brought about by fast-moving technological developments. Each of these changes on its own would significantly affect treasury; the confluence of such innovations will have a momentous impact. In the near few years, these capabilities will grow exponentially. Treasurers who welcome and embrace the opportunities presented by this evolution will excel. To do so, they will need to evaluate manual processes and identify those that can be improved, redesigned and replaced by these technologies. They will also have to assess their human skill requirements needed to achieve their strategic objectives. Adapting to this new environment will undoubtedly be challenging for some corporate treasuries. We believe that it will require collaboration within the ecosystem — between corporates, their banks, and technology and service providers. Open-mindedness, experimentation, shared experiences and lessons will be critical to the future of treasury.