ABA Banking Journal - January 2008 - (Page 43) the information is refreshed.” David Robertson, partner and head of the financial institution practice for Treasury Strategies, Inc., who is based in the Chicago office, says the Wells Fargo offering is likely set up to meet the needs of mid-market customers that have light staffing when it comes to handling accounting, working capital management, and cash management. Essentially, what Well has done is combine a treasury and cash management workstation that will appeal to corporates of a broader size range. “It’s a good offering,” he notes. Generally, top 20 banks have brought back the treasury workstation in some capacity to service large corporate customers who have big staffs in distinct departments for derivatives trading, say, or trade finance or cash management. “Banks in the ’70s and ’80s had treasury workstations for big corporates, but got out of that business. In recent years, they’ve returned with web versions of those products.” He cites PNC PINACLE as one example. Corporates, he agrees with Well Fargo’s Young, often deal with multiple banks and a combination of in-house and bank-offered solutions to move money, invest, pay bills, and get data into their general ledger. This makes it hard, at the top tier of the company, to get a snapshot net cash assessment on any given day. Supply chain management, in part, touches on bringing some order to all these links between corporates and banks to give that snapshot view so that smarter decisions can be made and capital “unlocked.” In the midst of research on the subject of optimizing the financial supply chain when she chatted at length with ABA BJ, Scarborough said improving receivables and payables cycles will make new types of financing viable. “In recent research corporate customers indicated that liquidity and better reporting were among the top five requirements,” Scarborough says. “The solutions need to be business process oriented so that exceptions and customer service interactions are easier to manage, and everything about the transactions tracks back to accounts receivable and accounts payable systems.” One scenario she offers is the case of a very large buyer that has a cluster of small suppliers as trading partners and has partnered with the bank for supply-chain finance. If suppliers use the bank to get information about approved invoices they can be offered early payment at a cheaper cost of capital. The analyst cites other examples such as receiving forecast information inside of Excel spreadsheets that are stored on their desktops and connected to their bank. Cell formulas, provided by the bank in industry standard financial calculations, let a company move information to other spreadsheets or ERP systems for further analysis. “Business users would click on a cell and get updated information, which allows for daily and dynamic positioning,” she says. But you need not look at such keen collaboration schemes to be convinced. “In 2005, the average administrative cost to businesses and organizations of paying for goods and services was $89 per transaction,” says Scarborough. reconciliations. Banks support positive pay and other fraud detection capabilities as well as controlled disbursement, cash concentration, and lockbox services. “The last few years, many banks have gone from a very siloed cash management operation to a more integrated approach,” says Jim Gillespie, Fiserv BankLink’s vice-president of product strategy. “The next wave of integration will occur in supporting better straight through processing front-to-back office and direct to clients.” Other vendors, such as Metavante, which launched a treasury management division last year, promote services such as billing, collections, controlled invoice accounts, and end-of-day surveys as well as traditional transaction services. BJ Cash management on the web The first phase of web-based cash management occurred between 2002-2005. A consolidation followed. Key providers who remain are listed below. Transactions good, insight better Matt Ribbens, a payments analyst at Global Concepts, Inc., and forum manager of The Cash Management Forum, a regular meeting of bankers, vendors, and payment specialists, agrees that the idea of improving the supply chain is of interest to those providing corporate banking services, as is improving all types of reporting for customer compliance and accounting purposes. “Information reporting generally is driving a lot of the technical development in the cash management space,” says Ribbens. Increasingly at all levels of market, he agrees, generating payments transactions is viewed as commodity work with thin margins. This last phase of becoming a commodity service was only accelerated with the advent of the web. Depending upon sophistication level, corporate customers rely on a single webbased platform to automate checking accounts, pay bills and salaries, transfer funds, or research whether a bill has been paid, as well as transactional basics such as initiating wire and ACH transfers, setting up automatic payments, and doing stop-payment transactions or account ACI www.aciworldwide.com Solution: Enterprise Banker American Express (via Harbor Payments subsidiary) www.harborpayments.com Solution: Harbor Payments payment, invoice management and billing solutions. Fiserv www.fiserv.com Solution: iLink (part of BANKLINK), and Checkfree (via Corillian) Fundtech www.fundtech.com Solution: CASHplus and webBANKER Intuit www.intuit.com Solution: Digital Insight’s Business Banking and Corporate Banking Cash Management capabilities Jack Henry www.jackhenrybanking.com Solution: NetTeller Cash Management Metavante www.Metavante.com Solution: Business Internet Banking S1 www.s1.com Solution: IBS Cash Management www.ababj.com/subscribe.html ABA BANKING JOURNAL/JANUARY 2008 43 http://www.treasurystrategies.com/ http://www.banklink.com/about-banklink.htm http://www.banklink.com/about-banklink.htm http://www.metavante.com http://www.aciworldwide.com http://www.global-concepts.com/ http://www.global-concepts.com/Forums/CashManagementForum.aspx http://www.harborpayments.com http://www.fiserv.com http://www.fundtech.com http://www.digitalinsight.com/home/home;jsessionid=32ED5F8A4623CE9C7BA65802B388F774.wc1j? http://www.jackhenrybanking.com http://www.metavante.com http://www.s1.com http://www.ababj.com/subscribe.html
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