In recent years, the importance of cash flow management has become even more pronounced. Changes in the operating environment, such as the long-term 0% interest rate, the business world waiting for recession, and the ageing society with its economic and dependency ratio problems have affected the cash management and even its basic tools , both in companies and in the communities. There are many new solutions that utilize the latest technology and UI’s for reporting, analysis and forecasting. From a management standpoint (cash flow optimisation, reserve investment, finance acquisition, organisational efficiency and performance), the development of tools is still clearly in progress.
Within a company or community, the development of cash flow management has focused on developing processes and supporting system solutions. The basic principles have been clear:
- Simplify
- Standardize
- Automate
- Centralize
- Outsource
Time and cost savings along with freed resources are the positive outcomes of this work done.
At the end of last decade, the list above got new features. It is no longer just simplifying but transforming a process and taking care of connecting the right functions and people. Execute the process in unity over the silos, develop the process holistically and get everyone involved in the process to work together efficiently. Traditional organizational models are also changing, instead of silos and traditional hierarchy, new models are sought, combining process organization, teams and networks. Part of development and consolidation is also a process collaboration across business or community boundaries (offer-order-delivery-payment), in which new benefits and savings are still achieved through standardization and automation, now together with partner operators. Next, dare to break the traditional process perception and move to a new level of operation.
It can therefore be said that, in terms of cash flow processes, development has been strong and continues to be so. What about management viewpoint and management tools?
Measuring operational efficiency and performance requires an equivalent process perspective, exceeding internal and external organisational boundaries, allowing for up-to- date information to support operative management and decision-making.
Cash flow optimization needs a solution, which allows you to change policies and activities just when you need to. The underlying theme is timely reporting, analysis and forecasts. In practice, forecasting today requires strong labor input, experience and knowledge. The reliability of forecasts has been heavily invested in the last couple of years. New solutions; forecasting robots; combine the use of artificial intelligence and the growing mass of related data, and accuracy of those forecasts develops rapidly.
The investment of cash reserves and acquisition of funds need a solution where these two functions could be combined in the same environment and interconnecting with one or more service providers. In this case, based on mutual agreements, the process could even be automated – the necessary liquidity would guide automated decision-making and action between operations – investing today, lending next month. What if we had a marketplace where demand and supply could meet on a case-by-case basis? Could we also see peer financing or other instruments that we today see on consumer market?
As consumers, we are accustomed to an endless number of great solutions and services that are offered to us through numerous channels. It seems like the phone in the pocket provides us with a much better user experience and functionality than the work computer we carry in our bag. Expectations for the functions and user experience of work related solutions are high.
We support our customers in search of excellence, also in cash management.