Purchasing Power 

Adding Value with a Treasury/Procurement Partnership

When a business’s treasury and procurement teams collaborate, it can transform how that business builds and sustains relationships with suppliers. Andrew Burns, Senior Vice President EMEA, C2FO, explains.

With the primary responsibility of treasury being to protect against financial risk, the idea that it can operate in isolation is obsolete. Treasurers need to understand how other functions are operating to be able to grasp where those risks potentially are. The deeper treasury reaches into the organisation, the better the insight it will gain on how and when to mitigate those risks. As Burns states: “It’s essential for treasury to be proactive within the business, making connections with other team members in order to be effective.”

In the past, treasury may have seemed to be something of an enigma to other functions of the business, its presence apparent only when something went wrong. When the global financial crisis of 2008 struck, the real value of treasury to other areas of the business became obvious, opening up channels of communication.

Today, new challenges are being imposed by the fallout of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Treasury has maintained its position of strategic importance but Burns notes that circumstances have also seen the procurement function riding a similarly steep trajectory into the consciousness of business leaders.

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