Overcoming common pain points in treasury and cash management
The DBS Treasury Prism team was one of the first residents of DBS Asia X (DAX), DBS’ innovation centre designed to encourage experimentation and creation. Spending more than a year at DAX, the team committed to solving some of the most pressing problems facing corporate treasurers. The result saw the creation of DBS’ award-winning DBS Treasury Prism platform
By Aniruddha Joshi
Senior Vice President, DBS Bank, Global Transaction Services — Digital
The corporate treasury role used to focus primarily on two areas — risk and cash management. But global changes, including the financial crisis, China’s liberalisation and regulatory changes such as Basel III, etc. have evolved the role into one that is significantly more complicated. Today’s treasurers must be equipped with knowledge in a variety of areas to do their jobs, ranging from changes in interest rates, credit, currency, tax and yes, regulations — all while juggling an expanded scope of work and shrinking team sizes.
We wanted to understand how we as a bank could help address some of the key challenges treasurers face. Through our customer journey approach, we conceptualised a solution that became DBS Treasury Prism.
As part of the development, the team spoke to over 50 corporate treasurers to understand what were some of the critical pain points they typically have to deal with.
1. Complexity in adopting new cash management initiatives
Treasurers, more often than not, find implementing new cash management initiatives too tedious and tiresome. It requires extensive preparation time and dedicated resources, and the underlying complexity often results in delays or even cancellations of these initiatives.
2. Lack of an effective evaluation system
Companies find it difficult to quantify the cost and benefits of a new cash management solution both from the financial and operational perspectives. This makes it difficult for treasurers to develop a compelling business case for change.
3. Keeping up with regulatory changes across different markets
Adopting a cash management solution often takes time, and companies operating in multiple markets need to understand how financial regulations might affect their cash flow. Given the rapid changes in regulations and policies, treasurers are fearful of compliance issues for new initiatives.
4. Dealing with stakeholders
Treasurers are typically accountable to various stakeholders across an organisation. That means collaborating with other departments and sharing relevant information with them. However, treasury systems tend not to compile information that is easily readable and shareable.
5. Defining the optimal
While treasurers are aware that their current cash management structure is sub-optimal, they cannot identify better solutions without investing a significant amount of time and money. As a result, many of them persist with sub-optimal cash management structures.
Illuminating the path forward for customers and ourselves
Trying to address these areas may seem like a gargantuan task. But given the large diversity in an organisation such as ours and people with multi-disciplinary experience, we were well positioned to succeed. In working towards addressing these areas, we’ve gained deeper insights on how treasurers think, as well as what their needs are.
1. Seeing is Believing
Think of the last time you needed assurance. Uncertainty diminishes only when you can physically see results. Perhaps that’s why the topic of data analytics has become so popular today, because knowledge enables clearer, informed decisions.
Knowing this, we designed a platform that could provide an overview of a company’s account balances and cash management structures. The platform could also use data to simulate various scenarios for treasurers to show how different choices affect their cash management structure.
2. Simplifying time-consuming tasks
A significant part of the treasurers’ role is in identifying and preparing information — whether it is to determine if a cash management solution is beneficial for their company or to build a business case to convince the rest of their stakeholders on the changes they would like to implement.
As part of the solution, our platform includes an automated workflow where calculations are done in real time, and upon a single click of the ‘Optimise’ button, a range of cash management structure choices are presented. Treasurers can also easily input the company’s data, and generate visual reports for sharing and presentations.
3. Quick and easy access to information
Today’s treasurers need to be kept up to date on changes across different financial markets. Sometimes, they also need a little help in realising the potential opportunities they have.
That’s why we built a Knowledge Centre in the platform to cater to this knowledge gap. The knowledge centre provides a variety of information, such as Market Profiles that help treasurers make sense of how a market’s regulations, tax and existing infrastructure might affect them. Case studies and thought leadership articles are also featured to show treasurers how their peers might have found workable solutions relevant to them.
4. Customising to individual needs
Ultimately, we discovered through rigorous engagement with the corporate treasury community that they want the ability to still make their own decisions. Companies might have their money placed in different banks to organise and separate their cash holdings. This multi-bank and multi-country arrangement meant that there wasn’t a single system which could provide an overview of their cash management structures.
To address this, we designed Treasury Prism to be a bank-agnostic platform. This means that treasurers can have greater oversight of their entire cash management structure across their choice of markets and banks. The platform can even account for how different treasury tools might work even if we are not an existing banking partner. In doing so, Treasury Prism supports treasurers in formulating strategies that can be applied company-wide.
Since the launch of Treasury Prism in Oct 2017, we’ve received positive commendations from treasurers and industry partners on the platform — a strong testament that it is making a difference for treasurers. We know however there’s always more that can be done — the solution is constantly evolving and being enhanced to deliver strategic benefits to treasurers. One area for example is enhancing connectivity between Treasury Prism and our transactional platforms.
How customers have responded to DBS Treasury Prism
“What takes a week today can be done in two minutes with Treasury Prism. This is the most innovative solution for corporate treasury I’ve seen this year.”
— Goh Seng Ti, General Manager (Treasury & Accounting), Isuzu Motors Asia
“It’s the first time I see a bank making such a system for their clients. It’s very comprehensive. With the search function, knowledge centre, glossary — it really covers all that a corporate treasurer needs in such a tool. We can also use it to educate our internal and external stakeholders on cash management, saving time for us.”
— Henry Ma, Regional Treasurer, Emerson Electric Asia-Pacific
“Managing money across the Asia region is not easy due to regulations — this platform makes it easy to see what’s possible, with regulatory insights, through a drag and drop interface. It’s something not readily available in other Treasury platforms.”
— Group Treasurer, Kerry Logistics
