Talking to suppliers and corporates attending the AFP Conference in Miami, a topic that came up repeatedly was the quality and integrity of the data used in making decisions. It doesn't matter, whether it is a long or short-term investment decision, a decision about supplier reliability, a pooling or sweeping decision, or which bank to use, the decision always is reliant on the quality and integrity of the data used in the decision.

The quality and integrity of the supporting data are vital and a key differentiator in so many services:

• assessment of available cash
• investment portals
• FX dealing platforms
• sweeping and pooling services.

A good example is the depth and quality of BofA Merrill's CashPro On-line Information Reporting services, which holds a whole year of multi-bank data. Another example is the integrity and quality of the data on counter-parties in the MyTreasury investment portal.