Oracle helps corporate treasurers increase visibility, reduce costs and comply with regulations

A part of Oracle E-Business Suite - an integrated financial, supply chain and customer relationship suite of applications that gives companies complete visibility into their finances, supplies, customer relationships and control over all transactions, Oracle Treasury was developed taking into consideration input from Oracle's customer advisory board.

"Using Oracle Treasury we have been able to fulfill the need for increased visibility into treasury activities while reducing costs" said Jawad Abu Farha, Group IT Director of the Dubai-based Juma Al Majid Group. Jumal Al Majid Group which has recently implemented Oracle Treasury, joins a long list of Oracle Treasury customers in the Middle East which includes Emirates Airline and Al Fahim Group. Over 500 organizations in the Middle East already use Oracle E-Business Suite.

To help companies with issues such as regulatory compliance, the need for increased visibility into treasury activities and cost reductions, the latest version of Oracle Treasury includes the following enhancements:

• Enhanced Regulatory Compliance: Oracle Treasury contains new enhancements to assist companies with regulatory compliance, a part of Oracle's ongoing commitment to helping companies with this important issue. Additional validation levels for payment processing and more preconfigured business roles help enforce common separation of duties principles, addressing both Sarbanes-Oxley and International Accounting Standards concerns of fraud prevention and risk control.

The application also has expanded support of FAS 133 and IAS 39, two major accounting standards for treasurers. The latest release helps provide greater visibility into financial exposures treasurers' hedge to reduce income fluctuations. It allows them to establish new types of hedges and track them through their life cycles. Additionally, new reports detail the use of all financial derivatives, an important disclosure requirement for these regulations.

• Enhanced Straight-Through Processing (STP): The new version of Oracle Treasury expands the existing STP capabilities beyond foreign exchange and inter-company transactions to also include money market transactions. For example, companies that frequently purchase or issue debt using discounted securities such as CDs or commercial paper can have information about those transactions automatically fed into Oracle Treasury, rather than having to manually enter it. Automating this process can save time, reduce the chance for costly errors or fraud, and help mitigate risk.

Additionally, to help companies save time, cut costs and accelerate the monthly close cycle, Oracle Treasury can automate the entire set of back-office treasury processes from portfolio revaluation through passing journal entries to the general ledger, which previously were separately initiated processes.

• Flexible, Real-time Cash Positions and Forecasts: Companies now have real-time access to operational cash flow information for improved cash positioning with Oracle Treasury. Instead of waiting for batch summaries, organizations can now manage cash by accessing real-time detailed information from both treasury and operational sources. Positioning and forecasting capabilities have also been enhanced to allow companies to view cash flows in multiple dimensions, enabling them to make better investment and borrowing decisions.

"Vendors that prove they are an integral part of the whole financial applications picture - all the way from general ledger to FX trading and hedging activities - are helping push the agenda of financial straight-through processing and making themselves part of an undeniable and crucial applications palette that every company will need to function in a highly regulated and profitable economy," said Scott Tiazkun, Research Manager, Enterprise Applications Research, IDC, in a September 2003 report entitled "Worldwide Treasury Management Applications Competitive Analysis, 2003."

Availability
The enhanced version of Oracle Treasury will be generally available during the first calendar quarter of 2004 for traditional deployment or delivery as an outsourced service.