All general cash and treasury management systems provide communications functionality or modules to receive and send data both internally and externally. The functionality ranges from simple electronic banking links to modules that automatically collect all account balance and transaction data from the user's banks and financial institutions world-wide, and transmit the department's payment and other transaction instructions.

The key differences in the communications CTMS modules include: the range of balance and transaction standards accepted, the number of individual bank balance and transaction reporting interfaces live and operational, the number of bank specific payment instructions available, and how easy is it to add new connections to other banks and financial institutions. Some CTMS suppliers also provide a SWIFT bureau service.

TMS Connectivity Options
Corporate treasury departments can either:

• just rely on the connectivity modules and services included in their corporate treasury management system (TMS) which for many corporate treasury departments will be more than enough (some TMS suppliers privately believe that for many of their clients SWIFT connection will never be cost effective)
• combine their TMS connectivity with:

1. a bank EB 'post-office' service for bank account data collection and instruction delivery
2. a specialist cash and treasury management connectivity / middleware systems and services to connect to their banks and service providers
3. a SWIFT connection
4. a bank and FI data aggregation and delivery service which can cover all banks.

There is no single right answer for all corporate treasury departments, but for many the connectivity functionality in their TMS will be adequate. The key question is when and where do the alternatives become cost-effective.

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