Microsoft is Treasury Today's 2013 Top Treasury Team for their work in amassing all the data in almost real-time to have the visibility of all their global cash and investment positions and also being able to drill down to any level of detail. This gave them the ability to work more efficiently with their global subsidiaries to improved cash-flow forecasts, and enabling treasury to provide more timely funding.

To do this required:

1. Microsoft to define what are the components of cash. They included data on cash in bank accounts, total cash in investment portfolio and overall balance sheet cash adjusted for accruals, and what was domestic versus permanently invested overseas
2. much more than just a large TMS, it required a new application - 'Cash Flow Analysis and Reporting' - built in SQL and using a data analytical tool called Power View so the treasury team could respond dynamically to questions in meetings rather than come back a few hours or days later
3. AND setting up a whole new infrastructure to collect the data and be able to be able to move cash between banks quickly and easily by becoming the first corporate to implement XML ISO 20022 v2 messaging standard for bank statement reporting using PAIN messages and using direct SWIFT connectivity to all their banks. Plus migrating all payments to the XML ISO 20022 v3 format. This enabled more structured and detailed financial messages, and also allowed Microsoft to carry out auto-reconciliation and auto-posting of their accounting entries

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The sheer scale of Microsoft of the data collection and data mining in 'Cash Flow Analysis and Reporting' application is mind boggling and impressive. However, it is the ability to turn this understanding into improved cash flow forecasting and mobilising the cash wherever it is needed is even more impressive. Also the implications for TMS design of this type of solution could be profound, Can any of today's treasury management systems provide this level of big data analysis and drill downs?