The Station Never Sleeps

A can help a midsize company manage working capital around the clock. In today's global economy, a is, in effect, a high-speed banking tie-line. The name treasury workstation is the catchall for hardware integrated with management applications that handle corporate functions such as managing cash, debt and investment services; maintaining access to capital markets; and generating reports from internal and external accounting systems. workstations have evolved into robust systems that manage cash, support position and portfolio management and offer sophisticated risk management functionality, says Ann Rodriguez, director of financial services consulting at BDO Seidman, LLP. Treasury benefits include increased efficiency, better rates on investments and more stringent expense control. They allow companies to automateost core operations seamlessly with a database and communicate directly with banks, other financial institutions and sometimes even customers and suppliers. Treasury workstations eliminate the need for multiple system spreadsheets; increase reliability in financial reporting and decision making; streamline administrative efforts; and reduce manual errors. Not long ago such sophisticated information technology tools were too expensive for any but the world's largest corporations. Today vendors are focusing on marketing to businesses of all types and sizes and price ranges. With off-the-shelf enterprise resource planning (ENP) software for midsize companies widely available (see How Midsize Companies Are Buying ERP, JofA, Sept.99, page 41), vendors are selling management modules both as separate units or part of larger systems. For midsize companies, a management application compatible with existing systems may be affordable. If a corporate treasurer's company has annual revenues in the $50-million-to-$100-million range, now may be the time to take another look at what workstations have to offer. HOW THEY WORK A is an information system that allows a corporate treasurer or other financial officer to manage a company's operations, comprising all accounting functions, funds transfers, investments and cash--including an organization's working capital and daily cash position. It consists of software, hardware, and a database. The hardware and database often are used for other purposes as well. Some more sophisticated workstations have extensive access to external databases including real time information on capital markets and e-commerce connections with customers, suppliers, investors and providers of financial services such as banks and insurance companies. External interfaces may be established to the existing accounting system for complete end-to-end processing, Rodriguez says. THE BENEFITS Vancouver-based Selkirk Financial Technologies has a client list ranging from Armonk, New York-based IBM Corp. to a municipality in New Zealand with a population of 60,000. Lyndon J. Harvey, Selkirk's chief operating officer, says businesses as diverse as a regional electric utility, a small boutique retailer and a major manufacturer use workstations today. (For user perspectives, see the sidebars, Times Mirror, Reflecting Trend, Relies on Treasury Workstation, page 68, and Ingram's System Saves $30,000 a Year, at left.) Treasury workstations offer big savings. For example, one vendor says his company might work with a client company that has average daily cash balances of $10 million, spread among banks all over the country. Given the minimal yields many banks offer, money that sits there is not doing anything for you, he says. Treasury workstations can reallocate, reducing the amount of working capital sitting idle in bank accounts by as much as 75% and sweeping cash from low interest accounts and investing it The company can put $7. …

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