Cash Management Goes Global

by Martin Bellin, Managing Director, BELLIN GmbH

Ten years ago, it was still a great innovation. Today, almost all companies have one – a system for cash management. It helps obtain bank statements automatically, plan current account balances, and manage all payments orders on a unified system – in short, it is the basis for electronic banking. Long gone are the days of monstrous Excel spreadsheets and paper-based payment orders. Today, such a solution is a basic necessity and many corporate headquarters have optimised their cash management. What is the next step?

Innovations hailed as revolutionary ten years ago have become standard functionality today. Everyone knows it, everyone has it. Cash management is the bread-and-butter business of any organisation. Internationalisation and growing complexity in this field have led to increasing professionalism in treasury. Almost every company has implemented a system supporting and facilitating cash management processes and tasks. Has the time come to sit back? No, now is the time to make processes more efficient group-wide. Now is the time to ask, “What’s next?”

The answer is actually quite simple, but complex to implement: Cash Management Goes Global. As the number of subsidiaries worldwide increases, so does the complexity of data which needs to be managed in the system. Soon, managing data for the group companies in Excel or on paper becomes highly complex and difficult to handle. Even if subsidiaries use systems to make their data available electronically, the variety of individual solutions implemented by each company can be nearly impossible to harmonise on the group level. Therefore, it is necessary for group headquarters to gain an overview of all local cash management solutions throughout the enterprise.

Integrating all group companies on one platform

To control cash management on a global scale, organisations need a holistic approach that goes beyond just a central treasury – one that brings together all group companies on an efficient treasury platform. Every company, no matter how small, has to send payment orders to a bank and needs to obtain account information. This is the foundation for the idea to unify all data in one system. All cash management processes have to be integrated globally – from signature authorisations to bank account balances to an overview of group-wide planning data.

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