together in that the financial director is increasingly responsible for procurement as well as treasury.”
IMPROVING FINANCIAL LIQUIDITY One of the main preoccupations of trea- sury is working capital optimisation – in other words, improving financial liquid- ity by speeding up money coming into the business and slowing down money going out. Working capital is a complex issue influenced by both big economic trends and detailed day-to-day processes within a company. It started to become a much more strategically important consideration during the banking crisis when businesses suddenly found their familiar lines of credit drying up. Gillies has seen working capital op- timisation increase its weighting on the balanced scorecards many companies use in their procurement process. It is the reason, he argues, that finance needs to work closely alongside procurement. “If you are going to pay suppliers with a more globalised process, then you need procurement to liaise with those suppliers,” he says.
One school of thought has it that the influence of treasury on card tenders is on the wane again
One school of thought has it that the influence of treasury on card tenders is on the wane again, because low interest rates mean companies cannot gain much by making short-term invest- ments with money they are able to retain in the business. Travel and expenses (T&E) spend put through a card is relatively small potatoes compared with the total throughput of cash seen by most treasury departments, especially those with high materials costs. Therefore, whether much can be gained by negotiating extended payment terms is debatable. Gillies is not impressed with this argu-
ment. “Cashflow is very important,” he says. Even if the card spend is not massive, the deferred payment “can be used tacti- cally at certain times of the year when you are looking at what goes on to the balance sheet. It is completely different from how a card was used in the past”. By no means everyone agrees finance is bossing card selections. “Travel manag- ers are having more input, and finance/ treasury is perhaps having less influence,” says Mastercard T&E payment solutions business leader Martin Chapman. “Over
KEY CARD REQUIREMENTS FOR STAKEHOLDERS IN YOUR COMPANY
1 FINANCE
• Treasury • Better cashflow
• Relationship with existing banks
• Spend visibility
• No cash advances
• Rebate 2 12 BBT CORPORATE CARDS SUPPLEMENT 2015
OTHER FINANCE DEPARTMENTS
• Efficient, reliable payment process • Mechanism for cost reallocation • Low cost of making payments
• Streamlined integration with expense management and accounting systems
• Tracking budget • Good governance through clearly auditable spend
3 4
In association with SECURITY
• Verifying privacy of data generated through payments
LEGAL • Compliance
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