TOMATO CATCH-UP - Newsletter Issue 160 – May 2013
Your monthly resource on working capital, process optimization and issues relating to the world of corporate treasurers, IT professionals and bankers!
Introduction:
CFO’s and CIO’s domain intersect. Finance and IT need to work closely together not least for both to be highly supportive of the CEO’s primary objective and also to get the recognition each department head aspires to and deserves. We at Tomato experience this intersection in all our projects as we find solutions for, treasury and IT.
EMC Europe CFO Steve O’Neill writes a monthly column on the intersection between the offices of the CFO and the CIO, especially about the things a CFO needs to know about IT.
Enjoy these and the variety of topics covered in the newsletter!
Regula Spottl
In Today's Issue:
TOMATO UPDATES
FINANCE, TREASURY AND BANKING
- Summary of International Payment Summit in London
- Latest Update on SEPA
- Working Capital Organization Requires Long-Term Approach and Risk Assessment
- Necessary Skill Sets Finance Teams Need but Are Scarce
INTERSECTION BETWEEN CFO AND CIO
CIO AND IT
MANAGEMENT AND CAREER
MISCELLANEOUS
Martin Schneider am Swiss Treasury Summit 2013
Das jährliches Treffen der Treasury Spezialisten/-innen in der Schweiz findet dieses Jahr am 11. Sept. 2013 von 8.30 - 17.30 Uhr in Zug statt.
Anbieter: Hochschule Luzern, Institut für Finanzdienstleistungen Zug IFZ
Martin Schneider wird als einer von vier Experten am Workshop “SEPA,
Cloud, FTX-EBICS” teilnehmen.
Details inkl. Anmeldung…
Sie finden Martin’s Recap vom letztjährigen Swiss Treasury Summit im October 2012 newsletter.
Summary of International Payment Summit in London
The International Payments Summit (IPS) in London from April 9-11 provided the payments community a forum to share knowledge and experiences on the issues that are currently at the forefront.
Treasury Today reported on the event and the key issues SEPA, especially the direct debit on the German Maut/Toll system, cash and trade, and the changing regulatory landscape. Their report includes quotes from experts, survey results and views on the development of specific concepts.
The
report is shorter and more to the point than all other reports on the IPS I’ve
read!
Treasury Today Report…
More on SEPA SDD below!
An article on SEPA in Eurotreasurer’s newletter addresses “pain-points”, concerns and confusion corporate treasuries face. Dieter Stynen, Deutsche Bank, explains the SEPA direct debits (SDD) in detail since that is the chief pain point for corporations.
Corporates’ concerns also include:
- The lack of preparedness of third-party providers – such as payroll providers and ERP vendors.
- Corporates may have standardized message format but their local suppliers/vendors may keep local versions of ISO files.
- Question whether both BIC and IBAN numbers are necessary for core direct debits.
- Who takes responsibility for creditor identification?
Details: “Sepa Direct Debits: Facing the Challenge” in Eurotreasurer’s Newsletter 08/2013 (May 2) Please download issue 08|2013 from their Archive.
Working Capital Organization Requires Long-Term Approach and Risk Assessments
Working capital involves primarily account receivables (A/R), account payables (A/P), and inventory. It is a best practice that corporate treasurers need to pursue.
However, optimizing working capital with a single focus on these components can potentially “harm physical and financial supply chains and introduce risk into a company,” suggests gtnews’ contributing editor Enrico Camerinelli in his blog “Working Capital Optimisation: Risky Business.”
Optimization measures conducted in isolation can be counterproductive and lead to unintended consequences such as deteriorating relationships with both suppliers and customers, Mr. Camierinelli suggests.
Therefore, to lower the risk of “adverse long-term consequences”, treasurers need to pay special attention to supply chain risk and liquidity management.
Full story… (registration required, free)
Martin’s
Comment:
Good article
explaining how the scope of optimizing working capital must consider the whole
organization’s activities and relationships! If just one aspect is optimized,
the solution could easily harm other operational, well-functioning processes.
We at Tomato extend our search for a solution to all aspects that a decision
impacts. For questions and comments how Martin Schneider would solve issues in
your financial flow management, contact Martin martin.schneider@tomato.ch
Necessary Skill Sets Finance Teams Need but Are Scarce
Most CFOs find that their teams lack critical skills that are necessary for adding strategic value to their companies. That’s the result of a survey conducted by CEB with 700 finance managers across 75 global companies.
The cfo-insight.com article CFOs Seek To Close Skills Gap In Finance Teams summarizes the results of the survey. A key finding is that such “non-technical skill groups such as skills related to the ability to develop people, simplify and explain complex ideas and to think beyond finance to understand the business drivers are of utmost importance.”
Companies that hire or develop finance teams with these 3 key skill categories are “3 times more likely to make strategic business decisions, twice as likely to be highly productive, and nearly 3 times more likely to be strong in attracting and retaining the best talent,” according to the William Amofah.
Details including three reasons why finance lacks people with the talents needed for the job…
Ten Questions CFOs Must Ask IT
CFOs don’t need to understand all the intricacies involved in IT, but they should have a working knowledge of IT so that they can make informed investment decisions and weigh the pros and cons of specific IT strategies, says Steve O’Neill, CFO of EMC Europe.
Mr. O’Neill list 10 key areas and examples of the types of things about which CFOs should have an “opinion about the potential impact to revenue, cost, risk and more importantly, agility for their organization.” The list includes:
- IT Infrastructure
- Cloud strategy
- Security strategy
- Data center
- Big Data strategy
- Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) strategy
- Social media strategy
- Business continuity strategy
- IT Staff
- Operational risk
Complete cfo-insight article with details on each key area…
What CFOs Need to Know about Software Cost Control
Costs related to software may account to as much as 25% of the IT budget, yet it is much more challenging to manage and control software than hardware.
To get a handle on software costs, a CFO needs to understand what software is licensed and the purchasing model involved, as well as the savings that can be achieved with the right business processes and technologies that manage the software.
In the cfo-insight.com article “Software Cost Control for CFOs” Ritobaan Roy explains
- Software basics
- Software licensing models
- Buying license
- Software asset management
CIO: The Most Critical Resource for a CEO
The CEO needs to know what issues impact company performance before they cause problems that adversely impact revenues. That’s why CIOs who invest in the analytics technology which provides the CEO data to make smart business decisions are a more critical resource for the CEO than the CFO, COO, or vice president of sales, explains Rob Enderle, a CIO.
The cio.com article “How a CIO Can Save an Incompetent CEO” offers way too many details, but the information under the headline “How Data Analytics Can Protect the CEO”, is good. Mr. Enderle explains that CIOs can implement programs that capture data from internal and external operations that are essential for the CEO. In addition, they can “drill through misinformation that often surrounds an unsuccessful CEO to save his butt.”
Mr. Enderle uses as example EMC, which has a huge “internal analytics program to build metrics around customers, service and sales to identify problems, build better products and, soon, instrument competitors' customers.” They will use the information to make product decisions. Just as important, the information helps the CEO to decide where to use resources to optimize the company. Full story…
In the past New York Times column “Corner Office” Nancy Aossey, CEO of a non-profit in the U.S., responded to the question “how do you hire”?
Ms. Aossey doesn’t pay too close attention to the curriculum vitae. She is more interested in finding out what motivates candidates and what their goals are.
She aims
at giving them a strong sense of the company’s culture and the type of people
who thrive in its culture in order for them to ask themselves if they are
interested in this type of culture and if they thrive, are productive and happy
under these conditions.
Full interview…
Bitcoin: Digital Currency in the News
I read about the virtual currency Bitcoin here and there but didn’t give it much attention until on May 3, the Wall St. Journal published a lengthy article titled “Bitcoin vs. Ben Bernanke.”
Some facts: Trading in Bitcoin has surged more than 300% in the past year to roughly 60,000 transactions per day and thousands of mostly small online merchants are already accepting payment in Bitcoin, according to the WSJ.
The article explains in detail how Bitcoin works, technicalities, advantages and risks. It lends itself as a great start to learn about this digital currency. Full story…
Bitcoin
can’t be brushed off for sure, but is it a bubble that’s going to bust? That’s
what an article in Knowledge@Australian School of Business newsletter, published on May 7, examines in The Mysterious World of Bitcoin:
Does It Have Staying Power?
My curiosity aroused, my next step was to find articles about Bitcoin in the
Swiss media. What I found:
NZZ, 9. Januar 2013: Vorsicht vor Bitcoins
Tagesanzeiger, 11.04.2013: Panikverkäufe bei «Hacker-Währung» Bitcoin
How would you respond to your teenager tells you that he wants to invest $300 in Bitcoin? Danny has done just that! So please, help me out! rspottl@triad.rr.com
From the Desk of Regula Spottl, Greensboro, North Carolina
The Bryan Series: Thomas Friedman
Guilford College, a private college near us, has been hosting the Bryan series for 15 years. Each year, they have five speakers from various areas such as politics, the arts, education, etc. who present their knowledge and experience.
A couple of weeks ago, the speaker was Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist and Pulitzer Prize winning author. He talked about the fast pace at which communication technology has revolutionized the economic landscape in just the past six years since he wrote The World Is Flat and what it means for education and the job market.
He further offered five “mindsets” we ought to adopt to move forward and compete:
- Think like an immigrant: Stay hungry. (In the U.S. immigrants are here to achieve the American Dream. They hunger for it and work hard toward it!)
- Think like an artisan: Take pride in what you do so that you’ll want to carve your initials in your work.
- Think like a starter-upper: Stay in beta mode and constantly redefine yourself.
- Know that PQ (perseverance quotient) and CQ (creativity quotient) are more important than IQ.
- Think like a waitress at the Perkins Pancake House in Minnesota. “A waitress at this particular restaurant made an impression on Friedman when she opted to give his best friend some extra fruit with his buttermilk pancakes. “She got a 50 percent tip. Why? Because that waitress didn’t control much, but she controlled the fruit ladle,” he said.
A variation of Thomas Friedman’s speech…
If you are a fan of jazz, listen to some while working via New Jazz Archive Features Rare Audio of Louis Armstrong & Other Legends Playing in San Francisco. That’s what I’ve been doing writing this newsletter!
And if I were in Zurich on May 31, I’d go to see Josh Groban at the Hallenstadion. My favorite singer by far! His signature song: You Raise Me Up! One of my favorite songs: Vincent. His new album: All that Echoes. Take your favorite lady to this concert. You make very happy! Ladies: Going to see Josh is perfect for girls-night-out! I might opt for that actually!
Find out more about Josh, the event and listen to 3 of his songs
Your
Tomato
Regula Spottl