Have you made your bank’s treasury management specialist a vital member of your strategy team? Learn how businesses can work with this important role.

Your bank’s treasury management specialist should be a vital member of your business’s strategy team, along with your attorney, CPA, banker and key vendors. This important role devises strategies that improve cash flow and maximize returns on excess capital. This article details the importance of adding a treasury management officer to your team of strategic advisers.

Today’s treasury management specialists are tactical, not transactional

Many businesses today want to work with a bank treasury manager who can be a tactical thinker and adviser, not just a transaction processor. Businesses are challenging treasury managers to step up and provide a higher level of strategic input and insight.

Bank treasury management specialists can add tremendous value to organizations that are proactive in building a strong relationship with them. Here are six examples:

1. Integration of bank data

Data that resides in the bank's internal systems needs to be integrated into client-specific accounting systems to maximize their efficiency and effectiveness. This data (including receivables, disbursement and balance data/images) can help corporate treasury managers accomplish a wide variety of cash forecasting tasks.

2. Automated accounts receivable functions

Deposits need to be posted and processed in a timely and effective manner, with customized data brought into the client's system automatically instead of having to be manually entered. And check images should be archived in a web-based environment for a minimum of seven years for easy access and environmental friendliness.

3. Centralized and automated accounts payable functions

Handling payables manually involves managing lots of paper, which makes it hard for companies to take advantage of payment incentive terms. Having a lockbox solution for receivables management increases efficiency, reduces processing delays, minimizes vendor disruptions and improves cash forecasting while creating an image archive of all detail.

4. Account consolidation

Your bank's treasury team should be able to help you consolidate multiple and overlapping accounts to maximize efficiency and minimize service fees.

5. Creating contingency and disaster recovery plans

Many business owners haven't thought through all the potential implications of various disaster scenarios, ranging from catastrophic storms to IT meltdowns, on their treasury management function. Your bank treasury specialist can help you plan for these and other kinds of disruptive events.

6. Guarding against fraud

Your bank's treasury management department offers a number of different fraud-prevention products and services, including Positive Pay, ACH Block, Receivables Lockbox, Invoice-to-Pay and Account Reconciliation. They can advise on the best solutions to help protect your business from various types of fraud such as check fraud, ACH fraud and cyber fraud.

Treasury management specialists help you leverage technology

Today's bank treasury management specialist should be able to offer true next-generation technology while keeping the client's specific needs in mind. If your banking adviser really understands the intricacies of your business, then they should be making recommendations and bringing creative ideas to the table to help you expand your company while growing revenue.

Bank treasury management specialists also need to be flexible to adapt to their clients' ever-changing needs, and they need adequate in-house IT resources (including custom programmers) to be able to develop customized client solutions. At most companies, the internal IT resources already have conflicting priorities and projects.

Any time the banking adviser can bring programming resources to the table, this opens the door for the corporate and bank treasury management relationship to grow exponentially.

Your Cadence Bank treasury management officer welcomes the opportunity to meet with you to discuss strategic cash flow management in more detail. Cadence Bank offers a wide range of treasury management products and services that can help you improve your cash flow and liquidity management. Contact your Cadence Bank Treasury Management Officers to learn more.

This article is provided as a free service to you and is for general informational purposes only. Cadence Bank makes no representations or warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or timeliness of the content in the article. The article is not intended to provide legal, accounting or tax advice and should not be relied upon for such purposes.