Operations
The large majority of the work in a corporate treasury department is administration, transaction processing and non-discretionary decision making. This absorbs most of the time and resources in the department as the chart below shows.
Balance of Time and Resources Employed in the Corporate Treasury Department
Source: J&W Associates Copyright© 2011
The basic tasks that have to be completed each day include downloading bank statements, reconciling bank account balances and payments, determining whether the company needs to fund a deficit or place excess cash, executing the required transactions, and closing the books at the end of the trading day. Nevertheless, they have little strategic impact or any contribution to the business of the company or group. No wonder all corporate treasurers and departments try to automate all their processing and administration, transaction execution and the non-discretionary decisions to free up time and resources to concentrate on the discretionary decision making, and the treasury strategy and advisory tasks that help develop the overall business in the company/group.
In many areas of cash and treasury management administration, there are now well established good practices and benchmarks, which give important pointers on how to carryout certain functions and on how the efficiency of your corporate treasury department compares with others.
In running a corporate treasury department, it is vital to ensure that for all processes and procedures, there are adequate controls. And also that they are complied with.
There three major opportunities for improving cash and treasury management admin: setting up payment factories, operating shared service centres and best sourcing basic cash and treasury management functions.
And, of course, business continuity for cash and treasury management operations is absolutely vital.