97 How Treasurers Deal with a Global Crisis with Didier Louvet

Foreign.

We'Re back to basics. We're being very prudent.

Yes.

But at the same time, you do.

Have some unexpected upsides.

I mean, you read the news. Walmart is hiring 150,000 people, Amazon's hiring 100,000 people. So a lot of people are going to get laid off. But you do have upside, you know, here and there. As I was saying, you know, stuff needs to move around faster because we need to be more reactive. So there might be more stuff going on. Planes that used to go on ships.

Okay. Yeah.

The problem is the uncertainty because we've never been in this type of situation. We don't know if it takes one month to get over the bump in the hospitals or if it takes three months, if it takes just one month and maybe, you know, Italy is going to be back online in April, I don't know, who knows.

When you did that focus thing with your team, did you do it in a sit down chat with them? I did. You know, we, I said, guys, I'd had lots of thoughts. What were their thoughts? We sort of threw everything out or how. Or did you just do it more as a relaxed thing? That's purely personal interest.

I mean we did it at the, at the EXCOMM level and it's basically okay, you know, what's happening, what are we seeing on the client side, what are we seeing on the supplier side, where's our cash, what are our options, what's the business continuity planning in terms of production and people and safety and all that stuff. And what I like in these medium sized companies is got 20, 30, 40 guys. It's not huge management teams. So you can get everyone together and get the focus and say, okay, you know, priority number one is we want to keep our people safe. We want to make sure that the operations are safe and that they're working. Priority 1B is what's our cash situation and when do we get into serious trouble? And you know, once you've answered those questions satisfactorily and you could say, well, you know, we've got three months of cash, we can take a breather. And then you start to divide up the tasks, you know, and get ready to anticipate the next bad news that's coming your way. But you know, that's basically how we did it. Everyone went from one realization to the next, like, this is going to be bad, this is going to be very bad. This is going to be the end of the world to, okay, now that we've got that covered, you know, let's move on.

It's all right. There's still beer in the world.

So we're okay.

Sorry. I make light of this and I don't. It's just because we're reflecting on this, not we're going to get through it. That's the key thing.

Yeah. So great team. We don't have perfect tools. We've got simple tools. You know, I have this thing which is, you know, the star of the moment. It's a 13 week cash forecast. Bottom up from my 22 countries. You know, you get that once a week and you know, that's basically telling us if we're going to be okay or not. Yeah, it's simple, but it worked. We've got the priorities, as I said, you know, our workforce safety, operation, our cash, and then we're reaching out, you know, to our partners, the banks, the clients, the suppliers, speaking to everyone, keeping everyone appraised, transparency, trust, communication. Communication. That's what we're doing right now to get through this. Because, you know, if you don't have that trust and that communication, well, you know, you're not going to tell the guy that, oh, you won't pay him this month, but you'll pay him next month. He doesn't know, he freaks out and then things go south. Whereas we're doing our best to communicate with everyone that we work with and I think it's very helpful to get through this. The governments, the banks, clients, everyone's pushing in the same direction and that's what makes me pretty hopeful right now.