2018 - a bumpy, difficult year: new business models & huge eco-political challenges

How are corporate treasury departments going to cope? As they become more strategic corporate treasury departments will become ever more involved in the stresses and strains of the world business pressures and changing business models.

Coping with changing business models

2018 will be the year when these new business models really begin to impact:

• real-time e-commerce:
  • with predictive ordering, see: Future of trade: transformation through disruptive technologies AND agility
  • Instant B2B models, see: We are all Amazonians now with ‘instant’ C2B and B2B models
• Becoming a subscription economy: subscription/recurring payment models are going to change how we do business, see:
  • B2B payments: do you do recurring?
  • Will “Post no B2B debits on my account” ever end in US?
  • Payments & procurement: mobile, intelligent procurement + subscription economy
• PSD2 - which could be a non-event in 2018 as many players are not ready or doing a very slow start - will change how all sorts of businesses think of how they do business. The recent Accenture study revealed that the 80 European retailers surveyed plan to use APIs to: 
  • access customers’ financial information so they can tailor products (74% of retailers surveyed);
  • initiate payments directly with banks to negotiate better transaction fees (53%);
  • reduce fraud (53%); and
  • generate relevant point-of-sale offers and discounts based on consumer spending habits (51%).
• When this happens, it will change the way many do business.
• Multi-channel payment providers, e.g. Adyen, are changing the way MNCs think about how to tackle regional and global markets, and when they combine with subscription platforms, e.g. with Recurly, usage can only accelerate, see.

Coping with geo-political revolutions and environmental change

Businesses are finding ways to build more sustainable ways of doing business, for example: 

• Businesses can build sustainability programs that make financial sense
• How sustainability programmes deliver
• Reconfiguring product lifecycles
• By working closely with their suppliers, consumer companies can lessen their environmental and social impact and position themselves for strong growth
• Integrating sustainability into core functions is key to generating financial returns from these programmes, see.

But will this be enough to cope with the pressures from political upheavals, e.g. Wars in Middle East, Brexit and the Trump driven policies coming out of the USA?

Then we have the dramatic changes coming from environmental change, e.g. more monsoons with 15-20% more rain than ever before, record amounts of bush fires, etc. Will Wallstreet be really flooded next year? 

CTMfile take: However strategic your strategic your corporate treasury department, you will be affected by these fundamental changes. 2018 is going to be a bumpy year.