The Treasury: At the centre of group consolidation
Generally, in cases of group centralisation, the treasury is one of the key functions taking a leading role.
By getting control of the group’s cash processes treasury is a catalyst for the rest of the centralising initiative.
Most of the strategic treasury initiatives are implemented through technology.
Treasury process improvements are therefore putting a focus on the TMS and other treasury applications and how well they are integrated in the group’s operations.
Modern treasury solutions provide huge opportunities for optimising processes, centralising cash and control, and for reducing working capital and costs. They therefore become very able tools for leading the consolidation of group operations.
Conclusions of this reasoning are firstly that the ability for technical integration of the treasury applications and the scalability of the IT infrastructure is crucial to achieve results.
This is also the reason why the Oracle and SAP treasury and cash management modules are gaining attention and increasing the installed base.
Secondly group consolidations is an ample opportunity for the treasury to prove value add for the core business organisation.
The level of decentralisation your company has is part of its DNA and consolidations are therefore usually hard to perform. But getting control of the group’s cash is the tool treasury can use.
When treasury gains that control the group management has the means of controlling the group. The guy with the wallet decides.
