A series of recent product announcements and new facilities show how technology is opening up new innovative ways of working for the corporate treasury department. Use the latest technology to re-plumb how you work

Combine your best internal systems with the power of external services

A recent example from the legal profession in North America shows what is happening. West km is a leading knowledge management system for the legal profession that many attornies use for their internal work processing (grandly called Knowledge Management). Thomson Reuters have just announced that Practice Point - a workflow transactional and business processing service which links to legal databases in Thomson Reuters including Westlaw resources and Practical Law legal know-how - now integrates with West km. Thus attornies can get the best of both worlds.

Using modern computing technology, it is now possible to add the missing pieces to your internal systems without having to throw out everything first, e.g. how the Reval Cloud Platform incorporates a wide range of partners the corporate treasury department need.

Mobile app uses crowdsourcing to deliver commodities insight

Thomson Reuters have just launched a mobile crowdsourcing Data Share app that allows farmers to share crop data in exchange for market insight. The app acts as a partnership platform with farmers around the world to create a transparent and better-informed marketplace. The app is designed to aggregate unbiased, raw data to generate more accurate crop forecasting and supply chain evaluation, helping the farmers to make more informed decisions.

Thomson Reuters explain that:

1. The new Data Share app was created for use by farmers and producers to contribute proprietary and primary location-based data around the crops they are growing (acreage and yield). This granular level of information builds an incredibly detailed view of supply of various crops, which can then be analysed and shared as forecasts to customers operating in the financial markets via Thomson Reuters flagship desktop, Eikon.
2. In exchange for this data, farmers are provided with high-level insight from a trusted source into the comparatively opaque markets in which they operate, helping them to better market their products and plan their planting based on reliable and trusted data that is gathered in an ethical and transparent manner.

This use of crowdsourcing to collect data raises important questions and reveals important opportunities for corporate treasury departments:

• what other data could be useful in understanding and bargaining with your suppliers?
• who could be in the new crowdsourced data pool?
• who would you trust to operate such an initiative?

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CTMfile take: The opportunity to integrate internal systems with other ecosystems is huge and under-exploited. Corporate treasury is just beginning to understand crowdsourcing and peer-to-peer working, they will transform the business.