New market research from Haymarket Intelligence has highlighted the fact that many corporate treasuries in Asia-Pacific are still using Excel spreadsheets to manage treasury and cash management operations, but that many are looking to change their treasury systems during the next year.
Specifically, the research, which was carried out online via FinanceAsia’s Corporate Treasury News website, revealed that a majority of those who answered this question still use in-house systems or Excel spreadsheets as their core treasury system. However, one-third of these respondents went on to indicate that they were likely to upgrade their operations within the next 12 months. Of these, approximately 50% said they would buy off-the-shelf products.
Completed in July, the survey received responses from 82 treasurers and CFOs, of which 44% worked in multinational corporations (MNCs) with the rest spread evenly between local small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) and large local firms. The average staff size of the treasuries was 11 and 70% reported that they had centralised treasury functions.
According to the survey, a majority cited liquidity and risk management as their main reasons for implementing new treasury and cash management systems, and that liquidity and foreign exchange were the most urgent risks that their firms’ treasury functions needed to manage. In addition, the most popular ‘custom’ treasury systems in use today are SAP, SunGard and Oracle in that order.
However, cash collection was an issue for only a minority of respondents, while three out of five said that the renminbi was at least moderately important to their treasuries today and will only grow in importance.
Haymarket Intelligence is a new and specialised insight and research service provider focusing on the Asia-Pacific. The research is part of FinanceAsia’s ever greater focus on treasury issues, which will also see the launch of a new treasury magazine early next year.
