Successful treasury management lies beyond the simple scope of the shuffling of cash from place to place. Increasingly, technology is becoming a critical component of tracking data and making quick decisions, with an eye toward knowing both where a firm’s financial position stands and where it is headed.
For one firm, Salmon Software, movement is taking place in literal terms as it targets new and relatively untapped markets for treasury management systems (TMS).
In an interview with PYMNTS, John Byrne, the company’s chief executive officer, said that opportunities exist now for Salmon to enter Africa — specifically, South Africa, with Nigeria and Kenya to follow — chiefly “because the market there is underserved.”
The initial forays into South Africa and the other aforementioned countries gels well with Ireland-based Salmon, due in part to the shared language and the establishment of its initial operations in the region via Cape Town. And though the executive acknowledged the unique challenges of entering an extremely diverse nation such as Nigeria, Salmon, partly with the assistance of Enterprise Ireland — the government agency that helps bring Irish companies into new and global markets through funding, export assistance and other collaborative efforts — found that enterprises in Africa, particularly larger ones, are lacking in technology that truly serves treasurers well, accurately and in a timely manner. And so, said Byrne, Salmon takes its place alongside other Irish companies exporting technology to new regions.
For now, the TMS landscape is not an especially populated one (with only a few juggernauts, such as Sungard and SAP), especially in Africa, said Byrne, with chief competition for Salmon coming from relatively larger firms that have snapped up TMS tech companies in acquisitive waves — and, as such, tend to be cobbled together from disparate pieces. Salmon, said Byrne, offers a modular approach that runs the gamut from data collection via various portals to trading activity across various financial instruments and currencies.
Byrne noted the “low volume but high value” nature of the transactions that typically are the function and focus of TMS, and with the millions of dollars’ worth of value that can comprise just a few (or even one) movement across the system, TMS tends to be a must-have for larger corporates, especially ones that are expanding regionally (and, say, capturing business in Africa). Byrne pointed out the “remote access” features of the flagship Salmon Treasurer software that can “keep track of real-time working capital requirements” across operations,and also provide insight and efficiency across both cash and non-cash intercompany payments — again, crucial for far-flung activities.
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Salmon’s software also offers treasurers the ability to conduct cash flow forecasting dynamically and track historically, across lengthy timespans, the assumptions as compared to the reality of cash flows, added Byrne, an increasingly important part of corporate strategy.
As may be especially germane to a trend that may grow among treasury professionals across the globe, “though it may be a couple of years away,” noted Byrne, to become a standard tool, given the size of transactions that can top $1 million, Salmon’s software, as it makes inroads into Africa, will have full mobile capability across tablets and phones.
