Tomato Newsletter Nr. 148 - April 2012
Once in a while, a new process is hotly debated until it becomes standard procedure. This year, the debate about mobile payments and security risks takes center stage. We first reported about it in the February issue and are following up one more time. Clouds are an issue that has steadily gained press, but we have largely held of reporting on it since too much seemed hype. That’s changing and in this issue, we feature two news items on the topic. What we encounter ever more are articles on hiring and job strategies, especially in IT publications. The blog post in Forbes Magazine on reasons why top talents leave their jobs is the most widely read and commented on we’ve ever seen.
Enjoy the variety!
Regula Spottl
In Today's Issue:
TOMATO UPDATES
FINANCE, BANKING AND IT
- Mobilität kein Sicherheitsproblem
- GTNews on Mobile Banking and Payments
- Improving Cash Flow Forecasting
- Treasury Departments Warming Up to Clouds
- Report on IT Strategy and Cloud Roundtable Discussion
- Is IT Innovation more Important than Cost Cutting?
CAREER AND MANAGEMENT
- Goldman Sachs’ News with Ramifications
- Six Habits of Strategic Leaders
- Main Reason Why Top Talents Quit
Martin’s Conclusion on Corporate Mobile Payments
By Martin Schneider
Most Swiss banks are offering or in the process of offering e-banking. However, e-banking access is not standardized by all banks. Logon and passwords are all different, not only by Swiss banks but by all the banks in the world.
After evaluating various arguments in articles and feedback from colleagues at banks, for corporate mobile payments the main point for me is the audit trail. Will an auditor recognize a year later, who, when and how a person logged into a corporate bank account and allowed some corporate payments for the company the employee is working for? Solutions are in the making, but as long as the audit trail is not traceable by the company itself without asking the bank for log data, we urge treasurers not to jump on the bandwagon too quickly.
Mobilität kein Sicherheitsproblem
Im Februar Newsletter wiesen wir auf den Artikel in Der Treasurer „Warum mobile Endgeräte kaum eingebunden werden“, in dem das Sicherheitsrisiko als Hauptgrund gegen mobile Zahlungen mit Handys genannt wurde.
In einer Replik argumentiert Martin Bellin in der März Ausgabe, dass sich mobile Anwendungen mit der Zeit durchsetzen werden und dass mit dieser Zahlungsweise die Sicherheit nicht gefährdet sei.
Sie finden seine Argumente in der Ausgabe 05/2012 (pdf)
GTNews on Mobile Banking and Payments
GTNews recently published several articles on the future of mobile banking and payments for treasury. Based on these articles, it is no longer a question of whether treasury will engage in mobile payment. It’s about what infrastructure is needed and has been developed to make such payments secure, interoperable and standardized and how this will change treasury management. (Access to articles requires registration with GTNews, which is free). Articles include for example:
How
Mobile Connectivity is Changing Treasury Management
Milton Santiago, Bank of America Merrill Lynch
The Role of Security in Helping
Treasury Go Mobile
Pat Carroll, ValidSoft
Beyond the Hype: Making Mobile
Payments Effective and SEPA-compliant
Dag-Inge Flatraaker, European Payments Council (EPC)
Mobile
Finance: Making Money Go Further
Martin Wilson, Luup
(Luup
offers mobile payment solutions)
The
Mobile Channel: What’s in it for Corporate Users and Bank Providers?
Raj Subramaniam, Fundtech
Improving Cash Flow Forecasting
Cashflow forecasting is one of our priorities when optimizing treasury departments. We often start with a liquidity status where all the bank balances are reported by one medium. The forecast starts once this subproject is completed.
In March, GTNews’ editorial focus featured two articles that may interest you.
Improving Cash Flow Forecasting and Optimising Working Capital by Mary Ann Rydel of Hanse Orga International illustrates how organizations that know exactly where their cash is can manage risk better.
In How to Improve Cash Flow Forecasts, Chris Goulding of Capgemini explains how banks and their corporate clients need to define a roadmap jointly based on the needs of the corporate treasurer.
Treasury Departments Warming Up to Clouds
Interest in cloud computing is steadily rising, but there is still substantial variation in how the term is used and where it offers the most promise.
The article Clouds Rising in the Treasury Department in the April issue of EuroTreasurer, introduces the definition the US-based National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) put forth: “Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.”
The article also describes a cloud-based Swift product that will be on the market in July and TMS providers’ offering with cloud services.
Download EuroTreasurer issue 04|2012
Report on IT Strategy and Cloud Roundtable Discussion
What can be better than a rundown of the most pertinent discussion items from roundtable discussion than to actually participate? In CIOs Must Fit the Cloud into IT Strategy, Thor Olavsrud, a senior writer for CIO.com, offers a comprehensive summary of the issues discussed by the panelists at a roundtable discussion at the Gabarron Foundation in New York City on March 15.
The participants discussed the current state of cloud implementation in their respective organizations and industries, what Cloud Computing promises, practical examples with processes and products, as well as challenges.
(Full story...) The article was tweeted well over 100 times.
Is IT Innovation more Important than Cost Cutting?
Similar to the “Report on IT Strategy and Cloud Roundtable Discussion,” the report on the BT roundtable on intelligent networks offers an overview of the arguments for or against the contention that IT innovation is more important than cost cutting.
In the CIO.com article IT Innovation More Important Than Cost Cutting – Ovum, Derek du Preez reports on the pros and cons participants presented. One participant argued that while innovation is important, “driving down costs is still a priority in these austere times.” Another one maintained that a focus on cost cutting “chokes innovation.”
(Full story...)
Goldman Sachs’ News with Ramifications
In an Op-Ed letter published in the NYTimes on March 14, Greg Smith, an executive at Goldman Sachs explained “Why I’m Leaving Goldman Sachs.” He condemned Goldman’s business practices, eroding culture and “decline in the firm’s moral fiber”. He criticized the company for focus solely on profit.
Within hours, every news agency picked up the story. Goldman almost immediately incurred huge losses and executives at Goldman entered a damage-control phase. An executive who spoke on the condition of anonymity said: “The Op-Ed landed ‘like a bomb’ inside Goldman. As result of all this, Goldman is reviewing policies on its deal makers’ conflicts.
The lesson to leaders is clear: Culture matters! It is top leaders’ job to find out what’s going on because if they don’t scrutinize what happens in the trenches, they’ll be the last ones to find out. And to do so via the media is a nightmare as this story illustrates.
Die NZZ nahm zu Smith’s op-ed am 15.3. Stellung. (Details...)
Six Habits of Strategic Leaders
If you’re a manager and spend a lot of time on day-to-day work, or if you aspire to become a manager, the article “6 Habits of True Strategic Thinkers” specifies those habits strategic leaders do well. They include:
- Anticipate: Look for information beyond the present boundaries of your business
- Think critically: Reframe problems to find root causes of issues. Check for biases and manipulation. Question prevailing assumptions and encourage others to do the same.
- Interpret: Look for patterns in multiple sources of data
- Decide: Frame the decision to come to the root of a problem. Balance speed, rigor, and quality.
- Align: Understand what drives others’ agenda; bring issues to the surface, assess risk tolerance.
- Learn: Shift course if necessary; celebrate success and (well-intentioned) failure that offer insight
Paul Schoemaker, Founder and Chairman of Decision Strategies International, elaborates on each of these habits.
Main Reason Why Top Talents Quit
In January, Forbes Magazine posted a blog in which Eric Jackson listed the "ten reasons why top talent leaves large corporations.” The blog post was hugely popular - viewed over 1.5 million times.
It suggested that about half of the ten reasons were about “poor people management – either systemically as in poor performance feedback, or individually, as in my boss sucks. And the other half was about organizational lameness: shifting priorities, no vision and close-mindedness.”
Erika Andersen, another blogger at Forbes, recently refined Jackson’s post. Not only top talent but most people leave a company for the same reasons. Actually there is “one real reason” why people leave, the new blog argues. People leave an organization when they’re badly managed and the organization is confusing and uninspiring.”
(Full story with excellent comments...)
From the Desk of Regula Spottl, Greensboro, North Carolina
Why I’m on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter?
Friends of mine often tell me that participating in Social Media is antisocial. It’s not for me; actually each of these outlets serves a specific purpose. Through Facebook, I’m connected with my family overseas, relatives in the U.S. and friends from around the world with whom I would not be in touch otherwise. Plus I’m connected to my favorite newsletters.
Through Tomato’s Twitter account, I have access to subscriptions and people in our line of work. I often find sources for this newsletter there. My private Twitter account includes connections to people who share similar interests including art, culture, travel, books etc.
Through LinkedIn, I find out what former business colleagues are doing professionally. For example, one of my husband’s customers recently asked about a company in Switzerland they want to do business with. Just a couple of weeks before, I connected with a guy I worked with years ago who is now working for that company; so this was a valuable connection.
I only post things that I don’t mind if the whole world sees them, so I'm not worried about privacy. Still, I follow the advice of experts to stay on top of privacy changes at Facebook.
What’s your stance on this topic?
Your Tomato
Regula Spottl