5 Technology Trends Every Treasury Leader Should Know About

Introduction

Technology is enabling treasury leaders to move away from daily transactions and serve as strategic counsel for their CFOs. While treasury teams have relied on technology for many years, the focus has been on automating transactions. This has meant that treasury teams continue to carry the operational burden of routine decision making, forecasting, and analysis – moving them away from more value-added tasks that directly impact cash flows, liquidity, and borrowing costs.

Recent advances in technologies including Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Robotic Process Automation, and Predictive Analytics have been possible by their proliferation through the software-as-a-service model. This has resulted in increased accessibility to highly advanced technology for enterprises of all sizes - at a fraction of the cost and negligible risk to existing systems. In summary, these technologies are helping teams to completely automate and eliminate delays from time-sensitive tasks which are critical for day-to-day treasury operations. At the same time, treasury leaders are leveraging these technologies to enable their teams with data-based support for more accurate decision making.

A recent survey by a Big 4 accounting firm concluded that inaccurate cash forecasting is the result of treasury teams continuing to rely on spreadsheets, standalone banking systems, and obsolete technology.

95% of the surveyed treasury leaders from Fortune 1000 companies have adopted the latest treasury management technology and best practices to achieve the following results:

• High-accuracy micro-cash forecasting with Predictive Analytics
• Real-time cash reconciliation and posting using Artificial Intelligence
• Enabling digital collaboration with trading partners using the power of networks
• Bank fee reduction without impacting your banking relationship
• Driving electronic payment adoption with smart campaign management tools