Treasury - When less is more (page 3 of 3)

At Oracle, we view the completion of our globalization project as Phase I. Our next steps will include further automation and control of other treasury related processes (i.e. bank guarantee requests & global account analysis).

To ensure we continue to control and approve all new accounts and bank relationships, global accounts are controlled at the corporate level. When we began our consolidation, we had 180 global bank relationships and 500 bank accounts. Today, we have 100 global bank relationships (with 38 of them earmarked to be closed in this fiscal period) and 250 bank accounts.

Additionally, the process of establishing key performance indicators (KPIs) is critical to monitoring the success of your process improvement. KPIs should be viewed as an evolving process - track what you believe to be critical, - review it along the way and change it if necessary. At Oracle, we have chosen to track things like auto-reconciliation match rates, the number of legacy bank account, and the balances held in legacy accounts.

We also track specific indicators around investment and foreign exchange activity. We have created a treasury specific scorecard that is published quarterly and sent to key executive management for their review. If you don't track it - you can't control it. It's important to spend time in this area.

In summary, making the decision to do more with less is not for the faint of heart. Globalizing your business is a hugh task, but if done properly will make your organization more dynamic, more agile, and ready for the next technology change... whatever that may be. Keep it simple. Less is more.