Why the future of treasury will be built with customers, not just for them

At most finance conferences, the visible conversation is about technology: AI, automation, liquidity, risk. The more important conversation sits just below the surface. It’s about execution. How do finance leaders keep up, make sound decisions, and move faster without giving up control?

Treasury sits at the center of that pressure.

Treasury leaders are being asked to move faster than ever, but without sacrificing control. They’re expected to deliver sharper visibility, better forecasting, stronger resilience, and more strategic insight, often while navigating volatility, regulation, and growing operational complexity. Technology is essential to that mission, but technology alone is not enough.

The gap is showing up clearly in the data. In Kyriba’s latest CFO survey, 67.4% of CFOs said AI will be the single greatest driver of transformation in their role, yet only 31% said they are actively automating treasury operations. That gap between knowing what matters and operationalizing it is where many transformation efforts stall.

Another number should give the market pause. Only 40.7% of CFOs report having fully real-time cash visibility, even though that level of visibility is foundational to the more strategic role finance is now expected to play. Many organizations are still trying to make faster, higher-stakes decisions without complete line of sight into one of the most basic requirements for doing so well.

What often separates high-performing organizations is not just the software they buy. It’s how quickly they adopt and learn.

Some of the most useful knowledge in treasury comes from practitioners who have already worked through the problem in front of you. It comes from the team that has already streamlined cash visibility across fragmented banks. It comes from the finance leader who has managed through uncertainty before and knows where the real risks sit. It comes from peers who understand the day-to-day reality of the role because they have lived it.

Too often, though, treasury teams are still working in parallel rather than together. Smart people inside smart organizations continue to spend time solving issues that others have already solved. In a slower-moving environment, that inefficiency was frustrating. In today's environment, it’s measurably expensive. Think of it like the difference between a 90-day implementation and a 30-day one.

This is where I believe treasury needs to rethink one of its longstanding assumptions. For years, competitive advantage was thought to come primarily from proprietary tools and internal expertise. Increasingly, I believe it comes from something broader: access to trusted networks of shared learning.

Most organizations still treat customer communities as marketing channels or engagement programs. That’s the wrong frame entirely. In treasury, community is infrastructure for competitive advantage.

Without that shared learning layer, even the best teams can underdeliver. It’s the equivalent of having a Formula 1 car without a pit crew. The machine may be fast, but performance breaks down if the team around it cannot adapt, troubleshoot, and improve in real time.

Some leaders are skeptical of this idea, and fairly so. They worry that community can become a distraction, another channel to monitor, or a source of anecdotal advice that is hard to operationalize. Not every community creates value. Not every conversation between peers leads to better outcomes.

But the best customer communities are not loose collections of commentary. They shorten the distance between a problem and a proven solution. They help customers adopt faster, make better decisions, and avoid repeating mistakes others have already worked through. Just as important, they give product teams earlier and clearer signals about what customers actually need. That has direct implications for innovation.

When customers are connected, they do more than exchange tips. They surface patterns, expose friction, and show which capabilities are delivering value in the real world. That makes the roadmap better. It makes product decisions smarter. And it makes innovation more relevant because it is shaped by operating reality, not internal assumption.

That shift matters even more when you look at where finance leadership is headed. In the same CFO survey, 73.5% of respondents said AI and technology fluency will be the most critical skill for future finance leaders, ahead of even risk management. That’s a striking signal! The competitive edge is no longer just access to technology. It’s the ability to learn, adapt, and apply that technology faster than the market around you.

In treasury, that exchange has to be grounded in trust. No finance leader is looking for speed at any cost. They want faster execution, but they also want control. They want better insight, but not at the expense of introducing new risk. They want innovation that fits the realities of their business, their systems, and their governance standards.

A strong customer community supports exactly that balance. It gives practitioners access to peers, tested ideas, and relevant knowledge in context. It gives product teams ongoing visibility into where customers are struggling and what will help them move forward with confidence.

That is the thinking behind what we have been building.

Kyriba Community is a dedicated space for customers to connect with peers, access curated knowledge, share expertise, and help shape what comes next. We’ve spent the last year building it, but the harder work was listening. Customers didn’t ask for another platform feature. They asked for a better way to learn from each other without waiting for the next conference, the next escalation, or the next quarterly review.

As treasury becomes more strategic and more interconnected with enterprise decision-making, the organizations that lead will not simply be the ones with the most advanced tools. They’ll be the ones that can turn knowledge into action fastest, and do it without losing control.

None of this makes technology less important. It makes shared learning more important. The platform matters. What customers learn from each other, and how quickly that learning shapes execution, matters just as much.

At Kyriba, we are making a clear bet: the treasury platforms that lead in the next decade will not be the ones that keep customers at arm’s length. They will be the ones built in closer partnership with the people using them.

If you are a Kyriba customer, we built this for you. We built it so you can learn faster, move with more confidence, and help shape the future of treasury alongside peers who are solving the same challenges you are.

Because the future of treasury will not be built in isolation. It will be built in community.