Empowering a digital treasury with SaaS treasury software

Limitations of spreadsheet

• Error-prone and time-consuming
  Spreadsheet setup and management take time and effort. Users must manually update rows, alter computations, and add more components as the firm evolves, which makes it highly error-prone. Moreover, it can only be changed by one person at once.
• Poor analysis of historical data
  The complexity of spreadsheets makes them unsuitable for archiving historical data. It is more difficult to effectively use historical data because accessing it in a spreadsheet is substantially more difficult.
• Lack of security and scalability
  Finding an error in a master spreadsheet can be challenging, and resolving it can be even more challenging—especially if the original developer was not the person who found the error—which increases the key-person risk. It is not particularly secure because of all the touch points. Creating bulky worksheets increases unnecessary risk in an age of genuinely affordable, helpful, and user-friendly SaaS options.

Limitations of TMS

• Bad customer service
  It costs money to continue providing first-rate, round-the-clock customer support. And most TMS vendors could find it challenging to provide that. If a problem arises that needs to be fixed, the user will probably have to tackle it independently or with an IT professional’s aid.
• Poor visibility
  A TMS provides subpar visibility if it is not adequately integrated with the company’s ERP. As a result, the TMS would not be able to provide daily cash visibility across the company, limiting its ability to forecast cash and optimize treasury operations. It also increases the likelihood of errors since data must be entered into the ERP and the treasury system.
• Long implementation period
  Employees must be trained on proper TMS usage to integrate a TMS into an organization’s workflow. Although it happens frequently, mainly when it affects the sales and procurement departments, it can often impact a company’s culture.

To overcome these challenges, businesses can adopt the latest tools, such as software-as-a-service (SaaS).

Software as a service (or SaaS) is a way of delivering applications over the Internet instead of installing and maintaining software. Teams can access it online, freeing themselves from complex software and hardware management.

Key features and functionality of a SaaS treasury software

The following are the features of a SaaS treasury software:

• Management of investments and debt
  Real-time debt and investment activity tracking across various asset types, such as stocks, bonds, and cash equivalents, is provided in SaaS treasury software.
• Analytics and forecasting
  Accurate cash projections can be produced utilizing data on past and present cash transactions and business and consumer payment behavior trends. Additionally, all cash flow estimates can be entirely automated so that the treasury team can concentrate on duties that create value.
• Reports and dashboards
  The dashboard and reports functionality help in real-time monitoring of financial transactions, including cash, debt, investments, hedging, and cash positions (by period, currency, region, and bank account).
• Risk management
  Current liquidity ratios, current credit rates, and aggregated market data on asset volatility can all be used to assess and monitor liquidity and credit risks. Additionally, treasury software can support proactive tracking of current FX rates and commodities prices to reduce risk exposures.
• Cash management
  SaaS helps to regularly monitor the inflow and outflow of cash for operating, investing, and financing activities. It performs automated cash positioning (daily, monthly, and yearly) regularly using the cash flow information from bank statements. Hence, it improves cash management.

The digital transformation in the treasury presents a wealth of opportunities for enterprise treasury functions to become lean, innovative, and efficient. The act of employing digital technology to build new business processes, cultures, and customer experiences or adapt current ones to satisfy shifting business and market requirements is known as digital transformation.

Companies find it challenging to commit to a significant digital transformation due to the following reasons:

• The process is complicated
• The benefits are far off and unknowable
• High expenses

These hurdles are solved with the SaaS solutions, which make it simpler for treasury teams to get scalability, robustness, and agility.

How does SaaS treasury software enable a digital treasury?

Some of the key benefits provided by a SaaS treasury management system for achieving digital transformation are:

• Enables seamless integration
  Corporates can benefit from seamless connectivity with multiple data sources such as TMS, spreadsheets, FP&A systems, bank portals, and several other individual data sources and teams.
• Provides rapid deployment
  Companies are now opting for cloud-based technologies for quick deployment. Low IT participation is needed to launch SaaS, which takes a few weeks to complete.

  This facilitates the following:

  • Rapid ROI
  • A solution with longevity
  • Extra space for strategic tasks
• Increases team productivity
  A SaaS treasury system excels at streamlining and automating laborious data management activities and manual processes, ultimately increasing daily productivity. Moreover, automated authorization and payment initiation reduce location reliance and organizational bottlenecks.
• It helps identify risks and trends and improves decision-making
  Treasury teams can identify trends and issues and find opportunities with real-time reporting and forecasting. This leads to quicker and more informed decision-making.
• Enables self-service models
  It provides a self-service platform that integrates existing weekly, monthly, quarterly, and rolling forecast models from spreadsheets to the Cloud. This leads to better cash flow visibility and reduces the turnaround time for reporting.