The Mobile Treasury – Fact or Fiction, Freedom or Fear?

by Mike Burn, Client ACCESS Product Executive, Treasury Services, EMEA, J.P. Morgan

“There’s an app for that…”

The development of tools and software for treasury professionals could be described as a slow evolution, rather than a revolution. Whilst those tools may have migrated from offline to online over recent years, they have still shared the same constraint: tethering the user to a desktop or laptop and thus hindering their mobility.

Trends that occur in the consumer space are inclined to eventually move to the corporate arena. But is that true of the trend towards mobile and could treasury professionals do all they need from such a device, anytime, anywhere?

Some would argue that treasury processes are dependent on the display of high volumes of data across spreadsheets and thus mobile with comparatively small screens is not conducive. Similarly, they might also argue that security is an immense concern. Mobile technology is relatively new, and so unproven from a security perspective.

These are two valid concerns for consideration. From an informational standpoint, one could suggest that mobile tools are perfectly adequate and it’s just a matter of adjusting to a new routine. Just as many content providers on the internet are adjusting to the reality of a huge trend towards consuming that content using mobile devices, so banks and third-party providers in the treasury space will adjust too. Data can be displayed quickly and elegantly in an app, and if the drill-down through that data is fast, intuitive and clear, then detail can quickly be found, even if it isn’t all displayed at once as users are accustomed to with spreadsheets.

Download our Free Treasury App for mobile and tablet to read articles – no log in required.

Download Version Download Version