FLSmidth gains greater payment control and global cash visibility with Kyriba

When FLSmidth’s Microsoft Dynamics 365 rollout created new payment automation needs, the group treasury team faced a familiar problem at global scale: how do you connect an ERP to dozens of banks without creating a tangle of one-off connections?

For FLSmidth, a full flowsheet technology and service supplier to the global mining industry, the answer was to put treasury at the center. Operating across many countries, currencies, banks, and finance teams, FLSmidth needed a more scalable way to support automated payments, improve global cash visibility, and maintain control across a complex banking footprint.

The company had used a dedicated treasury management system for many years and was satisfied with parts of its legacy setup. But as FLSmidth advanced centralization initiatives and its global Dynamics 365 rollout, the treasury team needed Kyriba, which they viewed as a more connected platform that could support risk management alongside stronger capabilities across cash, liquidity, bank connectivity, and payments. Kyriba also provided a cloud-based, scalable, and modular solution with continuous product innovation through regular updates, while empowering the Treasury team with greater self-administration and configuration capabilities to support future growth and changing business requirements.

With Kyriba, FLSmidth is building a more centralized treasury model, with group treasury playing a stronger role across cash, connectivity, and payments. Martin describes the shift simply: “It allowed group treasury in FLSmidth to become a really strong partner to the business. Right now, we are seen as the bank of the group.”

Centralizing payments through Kyriba

The Dynamics 365 rollout became the turning point. Finance teams needed automated payments and initially asked treasury for support connecting the ERP directly to banks. For a global organization with more than 50 banking partners, that model was not sustainable. Separate ERP-to-bank connections would have created duplicated work, added complexity, and reduced treasury’s visibility into payment flows.

In some cases, direct bank connections had already been built before the centralized model was fully established. That created extra cleanup work, but it also reinforced the need for a single payment factory approach.

Kyriba’s Payment Factory and Dynamics connector gave FLSmidth a more scalable model: route payments through Kyriba, apply controls centrally, and release payments to banks through one standardized platform.

“With the payment factory capabilities that Kyriba offers, especially the Dynamics connector, it was very easy for us to make the decision,” Martin says. With Kyriba, FLSmidth can route payments through a centralized payment factory before releasing them to banks, giving treasury greater visibility and control over payment flows, including the ability to apply payment holds, stops, and other governance features.

That control matters because payments are no longer treated as isolated ERP or bank activities. Kyriba gives treasury a central place to validate payment data, apply screening rules, stop or hold payments when needed, and standardize governance across countries.

Building trusted global cash visibility

Cash visibility was another top priority. Before Kyriba, FLSmidth was collecting only a limited number of electronic bank statements, leaving treasury with a cash position it knew was incomplete.

“The cash position we always assumed was imperfect,” Martin recalls. “It was always missing a certain degree or some countries.”

Kyriba helped FLSmidth expand bank connectivity and statement collection. In its former TMS environment, the company had roughly five branches or BICs connected. Today, it has at least 15, including banks across South America, Africa, and Asia.

Before Kyriba, treasury’s cash view depended on gaps the team had learned to live with. Now, as more statements flow into the platform, the cash position is beginning to line up with what FLSmidth consolidates in its other reporting systems.

“With Kyriba now, we have connected more banks,” Martin says. “We can see that our cash position is getting closer and closer to what we, on a monthly basis, consolidate in our other reporting systems. Completion rate right now, we sit at a very, very high percentage in terms of having this correct cash position.”

That visibility is also helping treasury take action. FLSmidth can use Kyriba to support cash sweeping and cash pooling processes internally, reducing reliance on banks for certain outsourced services.

“We have the information already in Kyriba. We have the rules that we can build in Kyriba,” Martin says. “Now we do it actually in a couple of more countries because it’s just so simple to set it up.”

Going live in six months and under budget

FLSmidth went live with Kyriba in approximately six months, ahead of schedule and under budget. The implementation was supported by Deloitte, but the defining feature of the project was FLSmidth’s hands-on ownership.

The team spent extra time upfront mapping existing treasury processes, identifying scenarios, and determining how those workflows should translate into Kyriba. Deloitte brought implementation experience and helped translate FLSmidth’s legacy processes into the new platform.

“We explained very thoroughly what our current processes and previous processes were in our previous TMS, and they came in and translated that into how Kyriba can do things,” Martin says.

That active approach also helped reduce external consulting needs. According to the project team, the implementation budget was reduced significantly from the original estimate.

FLSmidth did not want to depend on consultants for every future configuration change. The treasury team wanted to understand the platform, participate in the build, and develop the internal knowledge needed to maintain and extend Kyriba over time.

“We took a very active approach into building the system as well,” Martin explains. “We wanted to also understand how the system works and then, of course, be able at some point to do some additional configuration on our end.”

Building toward the next stage of treasury transformation

FLSmidth sees Kyriba as a foundation for its longer-term treasury strategy, including in-house banking, payments-on-behalf-of, and collections-on-behalf-of. The immediate goal is completing the Payment Factory rollout so every transaction passes through Kyriba before being executed to the bank.

That end state will give treasury greater transparency, reduce direct bank portal access, and lower the risk of payments being executed outside treasury’s view.

“By having a complete project at the end, I’ll be relieved because the risk is going to be eliminated and the transparency would be massively increased,” Martin says.

For other organizations replacing a legacy TMS or implementing a global payment factory, Martin’s advice is to start with the details: payment flows, banking footprint, countries, currencies, and standardization needs.

For FLSmidth, the next milestone is clear: full payment coverage through Kyriba, so no transaction can be executed from a bank portal without treasury visibility.