The CFO Perspective: The Strategic Value of Treasury

INCREASING VISIBILITY CAN RESULT IN UNEXPECTED BENEFITS FRÉDÉRIC MARRET Frédéric Marret is a senior finance executive with more than 20 years of experience at large multinational companies in Dubai, Morocco, France, and the UK. In 2013, he was appointed CFO of Webcor Group, where he has set up and streamlined the finance function, including treasury. He has also reorganized the group corporate legal function to consolidate it into a unified structure based out of Malta, to facilitate dividend and financing at a group level. Prior to joining Webcor, Marret was CFO at Louis Dreyfus Commodities—Middle East and Africa, where he was commissioned to build the Middle East and Africa headquarters in Dubai. In 2011, he was promoted to CEO for the Middle East and Africa region. Previously, he spent 21 years at Royal Dutch Shell (France, North Africa, UK) in several financial roles from controller to finance director, and later in corporate finance, which included the financing of prominent mergers, investments, and acquisitions. Group CFO, Webcor Group 22 LinkedIn Sponsored by: As a group CFO in the process of modernizing the treasury operation of Webcor Group, a multinational food distribution business, one key benefit that Frédéric Marret sees in a treasury management system (TMS) is the ability to receive global bank data, allowing for better visibility into group cash. “There is often a misconception that the group team and the local teams are independent. Having the flow of the same information to a centralised system helps bridge the gap,” Marret said. Webcor’s TMS project was initiated by Marret in order to improve the operational treasury tasks, so that group companies had visibility into was happening in Angola, where the company has its largest volume of transactions, as well as other parts of the world. “It’s not just about the visibility, it’s what you do with this data that matters,” he said. Receiving bank statements was not sufficient, so Webcor worked to integrate the statements back to the ERP. This delivered several benefits, including improved data quality, reduction in time spent importing statements, closing the book quicker, etc. “I know the group value at the end of each day,” he said. It’s not just about the visibility, it’s what you do with this data that matters. A TMS can provide visibility into your current and future currency exposure, enabling you to manage your risk forward by managing your spot and forward foreign exchange. A TMS can measurably reduce currency risk, help reduce idle cash, and improve many operational efficiencies such as speeding up bank reconciliations. 1 2 KEY LESSONS