John Colleemallay’s (Senior Director, Group Treasury & Financing, Dassault Systems) presentation at Eurofinance Conference in Barcelona in October described how they supported the group in its rapid expansion (more than $1billion) and transformation in the last five years. This work involved three phases:

1. bank harmonisation and cash centralisation
2. building world-wide cash pooling
3. standardising their systems and processes.

1. Bank harmonisation and cash centralisation
Dassault reduced the number of bank relationships from 83 to four main banks covering 90% of the flows plus 40 local banks for local regulation purposes and at the same time centralised their cash in each region. Example for Europe shown below:

Source & Copyright©2013 - Dassault Systemes

2. Building world-wide cash-pooling

Next Dassault installed a multi-currency world-wide cash pooling structure with Bank Mendes Gans:

Source & Copyright©2013 - Dassault Systemes

3. Global standardisation of systems and processes

The final stage of the transformation of Dassault treasury was first to reinforce the security on their global TMS, to interface with just one ERP and with general simplification of corporate procedures. Next they set up a payment factory linked to SWIFT using 3SKey security, and full employment of XML in their SEPA implementation:

Source & Copyright©2013 - Dassault Systemes

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These three phases in the transformation Dassault Systemes Group Treasury have allowed them to support and facilitate the growth of the group by ensuring that cash is a core asset that is fully centralised (95%) and secured, and at the same time investments are optimised. Not only this, they have also harmonised processes and systems to allow for greater visibility and access. This an excellent example of what corporate treasury is all about.