In their presentation at Eurofinance's Monaco conference in September, entitled 'Changing the game in treasury management', Conor Leyden and John Voorhis from Omnicom Group, covered the basic approach needed to change the game.

The management philosophy they recommend is to:

• have a flexible organization and have flat organization, cross-communication at all levels
• ensure resources are allocated based on need and that there is cross-training among positions and treasury centers
• Communicate, Communicate, Communicate
• get the bad news out early because a problem shared is a problem halved
• before undertaking a project, assess value to your company.

They followed this with their operating principles for effective corporate treasury departments:

• treat operating units as our customers
• view IT as a strategic tool
• global solutions are:
• scalable to match growth
• standard across regions
• straight through processing
• don't hesitate to try new ideas, but discontinue bad ideas early
• staff projects with temporary resources managed by permanent employees to avoid conflicting priorities
• once a project is started, don't allow scope creep
• make sure that systems are accessible anywhere in the world
• dedicated IT resources are needed in the corporate treasury department
• ensure that internal resources: legal, tax, and accounting teams your partners.

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Sound advice from experienced practitioners.