Managing Risk and Supporting Growth in the E-commerce Era

Treasury and Trade Solutions 15 A multinational corporate in the beauty sector This company is one of the world’s largest cosmetics companies. E-commerce is a strategic priority for the company, with online sales now accounting for over 10% of the group’s consolidated sales. The company leverages both direct to consumer sales on its brands’ websites and sales via its retail partner websites. Treasury plays a key role in enabling e-commerce growth for the beauty brands, particularly to drive the consumer payments strategy with the business. “Payment methods are important for the customer experience. The consumer’s checkout should be, and must be, as seamless as possible” explains the international treasurer. Two years ago, as the number of brands setting up e-commerce platforms grew, a D2C payment committee was setup at group level, to bring together the diverse stakeholders and functions that are impacted by direct to consumer e-commerce — including treasury, finance, supply chain, digital, retail, purchasing, IT, legal and accounting functions. The committee sets payment guidelines for the e-commerce brands, include guidelines on PSP selection, new payment methods and considerations for security, fraud and customer experience. The committee also acts as a funnel for replicating best practices — it has a worldwide view of the payment methods offered by the various e-commerce brands, checkout conversion rates, and looks to export best practices across different markets and regions. Developing payment expertise within treasury has been a priority and deemed to be a key enabler in treasury becoming a strategy business partner. “We modified the job descriptions of treasury personnel in each country to ensure they prioritise developing expertise in payment methods. We also created a new role, Head of D2C payment methods, within Group Treasury” says the international treasurer. Buy-in and sponsorship at board level has been key to treasury’s engagement in e-commerce projects. The international treasurer says, “The Group CFO was a key sponsor for the payment committee, as he sought to break down the silos and bring all stakeholders together to discuss e-commerce and retail. Interestingly, the stakeholders were pleased to hear that a committee was being formed to focus on their concerns and help them address challenges and pain points.”