You bet! Power BI is Microsoft’s ultimate declaration of war on so-called business intelligence products, i.e. those products which are generally referred to as ‘report generators’. For many years, Microsoft paid little attention to this issue. None of its earlier solutions, some of which have already disappeared from the market, were really market-ready and usable by anyone without in-depth technical knowledge and SQL skills. Power BI is now a product worth taking seriously and one which is being further developed, in part based on direct communication with users. We also didn’t think it was possible, but it seems that Microsoft is actually listening. Microsoft is currently going through major upheavals. Power BI, however, is one of the signs that it is now heading in the right direction.

Power BI allows you to directly access databases and to create your own reports based on data exports from your own systems. To highlight what this could look like in practice, we have put together two examples of reports which also demonstrate one of the most impressive features: These reports can be opened in your browser. You don’t need to install anything and yet you still have the full range of interactive features at your fingertips, whether on a desktop PC, a tablet or on your smart device. In contrast to other similar systems, Power BI is really easy to use and therefore also perfectly dovetails with TFM (www.tfm-now.com), our cash reporting and cash flow forecasting solution.

Click on the following links to access the reports (prepared on the basis of TFM data). These user-ready reports were created from a blank spreadsheet in just a few minutes.

• Cash Position & Accounts

• Cash Flow Forecast & FX Exposure

If you want to find out more about Power BI and how it can support you in your day-to-day work, please get in touch with us or register for one of the webinars in which, among other aspects, we also present solutions based on Power BI.

These days, everyone seems to be offering webinars on a wide range of issues, meaning that this medium is no longer particularly innovative. What makes our webinars different? Ours are based on requirements you are possibly often faced with in your day-to-day business and we show you how, and with which system-based support, we tackle such tasks. This means that the focus is on the use case rather than on the solution as the starting point. For example, this could be the challenge of translating a budget into a cash flow forecast. Or the visualization of FX exposures within a group of companies. Or even the automation of the conclusion of group-internal hedges and translating the associated cash flows back into a cash flow forecast so you can monitor compliance with limits and hedge ratios.

Numerous slots are available for the webinars. See our website for details. If none of these slots fits your schedule, just let us know. We also hold these webinars for individual companies or interested parties ‘on demand’.

By the way: Participation in these webinars is free-of-charge.

Nearly every survey recently conducted among treasury managers, regardless of whether in Europe or the USA, has revealed the same findings: The top priority at the moment is the issue of liquidity management. This is bad news from the perspective of system providers due to the fact that Excel still remains the leading technological solution for mastering these tasks. The explanations provided for this are often the comparably higher degree of flexibility, greater user friendliness and the lower costs associated with Excel. The issue of costs (and cost transparency) alone would warrant its own article.

Nonetheless, we are delighted by the increase in demand for TFM and the new customers who are either already deploying TFM or plan to do so in the future. TFM is a genuine Cloud-based solution which can be rapidly implemented, smoothly integrated into any system landscape and can hold its own against any Excel-based solution in terms of user friendliness. These features, combined with a fair pricing structure and without significant ramp-up costs, explain the rising demand for TFM.

To find out more, simply visit us at www.tfm-now.com or schedule an online presentation.

Covering all of the aspects here would more than exceed the scope suitable for any newsletter. This is another issue on which recent survey findings confirm our impression that treasury systems frequently fail to deliver what customers expect.  It would be too easy and also not appropriate to only look for the culprits on the side of the system providers. Based on our experience, two of the main reasons are often a lack of technical understanding on the part of the customer, from the treasury department to the decision-makers, as well as a lack of experience when it comes to the requirements specification, i.e. the definition of the customer's requirements in terms of the provider, system and, in particular, reports.

It is of course tempting to buy the system offered by the market leader in the hope that all of the problems will just solve themselves. After all, this is a product which is also being used by many other companies. If you consider, however, that the vast majority of these customers declare in the course of surveys that they are not fully satisfied, then the issue of market penetration becomes relative.  One option would be to also appoint an external consultant who, using a hundred-question checklist, creates the impression that this can resolve the shortcomings mentioned above since this increases the sense of security enjoyed by customers.

The crux of the matter however is that, with a basic understanding of the technical issues involved (even though you won't be able to communicate on the same level as technical experts), you will be able to develop a far better understanding of the fundamental technology involved. We often see user-created Excel-based tools. These repeatedly make very clear that there is a lack of understanding about the technological basics. This is related less to the formulae, although we could also discuss that at length, and far more a question of how data are organized. But it is exactly this issue which is indispensable if you don't want to have to start from scratch again the first time you need to modify a table. "Just do it. It'll work out" is usually a very poor starting point and, in reality, the reason why it is unlikely that the second part of the claim will ever come true. 

Our webinar on IT basics for treasurers will provide you with the basics which you really should have a grip of if you plan to deal with systems or repeatedly rely on Excel to get yourself out of trouble.

For more details, please drop us a line at treasury-it-basics@treamo.com and we will be in touch with proposed dates/times.

The recent high-profile cases involving so-called 'CEO mails' (often erroneously referred to a cyber fraud despite having absolutely nothing to do with Internet-based crime) as well as the resulting losses in the millions, unfortunately highlight how simple it sometimes is to extract funds from companies by exploiting systems of rules or their absence.

You have no doubt asked yourself whether something similar could happen at your company. The four-eyes principle of dual control alone is not enough. It's always amazing to see how easy it would be to manually interfere in processes, to trigger or divert payments, or to make simple mistakes which are only discovered when it is already too late. Nothing surprises us any more: A few years ago, we discovered an incoming payment of EUR 11,000,000.00 instead of EUR 11,000.00 for consultancy work. We managed to resist the temptation to jump on a plane to Brazil.

If you ever decide to have your processes and procedures independently analyzed, we will be happy to help. Just contact us at office@treamo.com.

Due to the high level of interest in our tools, we decided to redesign the market data feed. FX rates are now displayed directly on our website and requests return the desired results within a split second. The latest tools can be downloaded from the abovementioned link, free-of-charge and without registering.