Commentary
“No man is an island”. The phrase comes from the 17th century English poet, John Donne (it has since been used in a popular song….). Nowhere is this truer than in a modern enterprise. However, in many ways, modern companies can be difficult places to collaborate and work with our colleagues: conflicting priorities and objectives make it challenging to obtain the resources and help we need to do our jobs. This goes from the traditional problem of sales teams who want to increase payment terms to improve revenue, to IT departments, for whom treasury’s needs are often far from being a top priority.
In our calls, participants regularly complain of the challenges in getting the help and cooperation of other functions, and the low priority for resources which comes from being a cost centre. We organised this call to go through the challenges people face, and see which actions work best.
The functions treasurers have issues with are fairly consistent: sales, procurement, tax, accounting, FP&A, legal, IT. The single issue which came through the most was KPIs and compensation: if treasury’s risk management recommendations get in the way of achieving a KPI, that can mean a reduction in personal income for someone.
If there was a simple solution to this problem, we would have all implemented it by now. But some common themes emerged:
- Communicate, communicate, communicate: sharing a problem or a viewpoint does not guarantee help – but it does increase the chances of getting it.
- At the risk of stating the obvious: a lot depends on the people involved
- Try to communicate facts and data: positions are respected better when they are backed up by data.
- Try to create a win/win situation: everyone noted that cooperation increases significantly when the other side also needs you. As one participant put it, the team in Egypt needs help: they are more likely to cooperate than the one in Japan, which does not.
- It is important to have the backing of management.
- Of course, there are situations where Treasury can
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