Craig Jeffery explains how treasury consulting has changed, emphasizing that specialized expertise and senior practitioners matter more than size. Smaller firms can compete by offering practical, customized solutions that larger consultancies often miss.
Our competition was some of the more independent consulting firms that were more specialized in consulting. There's a number of them and occasionally it would be the bigger four firms. We find we compete with them and we competed with them. Usually if there was, the treasury had a real need for specific treasury expertise. Oftentimes the big four are locked up at the CEO level and will get most of the projects. But sometimes there's a project in play or there's something that's needed that's specialized, and then treasury says, we need to get someone who really knows this deeply, not a more general, a generalized firm in finance. I think that the unique selling point is that we're all practitioners, very senior level people have experience doing things. We've run them and been accountable. And because we've done that, our recommendations are very practical. It's not just boilerplate, it's specific, it's customized, and it makes sense. And that has very good credibility. And combined with that, because all of our senior consultants, for example, are treasurers, ats, very senior people who have done these things. We also have experience in banks as consultants. And so we've had the added benefit of not just working in a few companies, but working with many companies. So we have that broad view as well as the deep expertise that tends to be quite compelling to treasurers who want things done that are practical. I think the best way to say is why do people choose us? And it's usually because they know us or they were referred to us by a trusted treasurer, a trusted banker who said, you need to look at them to solve this type of problem or this type of issue. They're very specialized, they're all experienced, they get things done. It's practical. Now, if those are key elements, that puts us in a good standpoint. I can't speak to all the other reasons why people choose different firms, but those are, those are some of the key elements of why we get into projects. And then we'll get follow on projects and follow on projects. So oftentimes it might be something about designing and structuring your treasury group or your technology. We tend to be recognized very well in those areas as providing great information. I know sometimes we have to fix what's been designed because there's so much change taking place in technology. Someone provides a template that was pretty modern eight years ago, but is completely out of date for the company. So I think our ability to calibrate what an organization needs technologically and structurally helps us serve our customers quite well.
