Bart Hendriks from Orchard Finance explains why treasury departments need strong policies and strategies before implementing any system. He contrasts his banking background with advisory work, emphasizing that tools matter less than the foundation you build first.
My experience is, I don't want to be very generalistic, but companies who grow very fast and who grow their Treasury Department also quite fast, they sometimes lack some of the basics. And what I mean with that is that these companies, even though they have a Treasury Department and already experienced treasury people on board, they miss a certain strategy or they miss policies. So they start implementing treasury management systems, they start hedging their exposures. But what they lack is the foundation. I think that's key in any Treasury Department or any treasury function is that you start with the basics and that is determining your scope, determining your policies. And based on these policies, you develop processes, you look for tools to support you there. And that's the way you should set up a Treasury team. I found out that I like these projects. I like working on, setting up Treasuries, advising Treasuries, working with different Treasuries. So I took a turn in my career and I joined Orchard Finance, which is one of the leading treasury advisory firms in the Netherlands. And. And I joined them in their treasury and corporate finance department to support other companies in the development of their treasury function. Luckily, I was supported by, I think, one of the best CFOs I've ever had. And she was very constructive, very supportive. And this was the biggest change for me compared to banking. It was when I thought about, for example, a trading platform, which we didn't have at the beginning, I went to my CFO and instead of saying, well, can you write a business case and then we will have a look, her response was, why didn't you do this before? Just get it done and do it. And that was completely different than working for banks, where if you had an idea, it had to go through four or five layers and then you never knew where it would end up. This was very to the point and very, I mean, very dynamic. It was great to work in an environment like that. SA.
