How Treasurers at DCC, OCI & Duracell Built High-Performing Treasury Teams

This week's Treasury Career Corner podcast comes straight to you from our live event in London. We had three amazing treasurers on stage, sharing their stories and insights and their treasury career journeys. Here's a quick taste of what you'll hear on today's episode.

Everyone always asks me, how did you make the leap from being on a site in a hard hat to being the treasurer? And actually, there's quite a lot of similarities, believe it or not, because it makes no difference if you're counting euros or you're counting bricks, you're numerous.

So I spent quite a lot at the start of the role, just literally going out, meeting all our stakeholders, as many as I could, as quickly as I could, and having open, engaging discussions and then doing it within the business as well. About because, like our customers, within the business are the businesses, right?

Some of the strongest people that I've come across have come in with very little technical skills, a lot of common sense and a bit of get up and go and have made fantastic careers themselves. So it's capability, personality, cultural fit. As long as you're building a team where there is a culture of cooperation and collaboration and people can understand the value and see what different types of capabilities bring to the overall team, that's how you one of the key elements of developing a high performing team.

Welcome to this week's Treasury Career Corner podcast, where I interview treasury professionals about their treasury careers. Each and every week, I talk to treasurers about how they build their careers, where they are now, where they see both themselves and the treasury profession going to next. Let's get on with the show. Few of you have been here before. Thank you very much for returning. That's a good thing. For those of you that haven't, we've got a couple of ground rules. Firstly, energy and enthusiasm. You've had a long day at work, but you've made the effort to come here and we're very grateful for you doing that. I mean, you've got three incredible treasurers and a recruiter. Can't have everything. Sorry about that, but I usually do this thing. Good evening, blah, blah, blah. We're going to get one Good evening. And you're going to give back the love. Good evening, London. That's better. Thank you very much. Second rule, phones. Switch them off, guys. Give some time to yourselves in your treasury careers. You've made the effort to come here. Just switch them off for an hour, they'll still be there in the bar in a bit so you can get back to them and everything else and look at the football scores. So don't worry. So I want to thank our lovely sponsors and our host here. So can I have the. Where's Kristen? Where are you, sir? There you go. That's our host. Be very nice to him. You can be very nice to Sarah, but don't be too nice to Sarah and the guys at Chatham. Where are you, Sarah? Over there. You can be nice to Sarah and the guys, but they are paying for it and they're supporting us, otherwise we couldn't do this. Kyriba, where are you guys? There somewhere. There you go. That's better. So please do make a beeline for those guys. They support us. And also they are paying for the drinks. Yeah, there you go. I can see you, treasures, and you're a thirsty bunch. So who am I? As my wife said, we're going to get this photo changed. Lost a couple of pounds, thank goodness. But I'm Mike Richards, run the treasury recruitment company. Enough about that. You know all about this stuff. But I talk around the world. Treasure Career corner lives. How did it happen? There you go, there's the team. Katie, where are you? There's Katie there. She'll be coming around with a microphone as well. That's another thing. We will go around with microphones. When was the last time you got to ask three incredible treasurers these questions? And you can put them on the spot. We'll even get. Yeah, no, I'm not going to get Mouse to sing in the microphone later. But that might be in the bar later. But how did this all happen? I do a podcast. You now can get your CPD CTP credits by listening to some incredible treasurers. And we have two out of three who have been on the podcast. No pressure, Philip, but he'll obviously be a guest at a later stage and I've got witnesses there. So now. So I started talking to treasurers about their treasury careers and I enjoyed it so much, I thought, we can make it a live show like this. So now I talked to treasurers, as we're going to do today, about their treasure careers, how they started, how they made the moves, what decisions did they make? And then you guys can listen to their stories and copy them. Because as Tony Robbins says, success leaves clues. So without further ado, then go some of their structure. We'll get the panelists to introduce themselves, they'll talk through how they started, then we'll go across and then we'll come back and we'll quiz them as we go through. Over to you, Declan. There you go. Switch Yourself. Oh, that's it. Switch yourself on.

Thank you.

Here we go. Technical 101 we go. There you go. Now you're working.

Thanks, Mike.

Does that work? Everyone can hear me.

Great, thank you. Firstly, thanks for the invitation to speak here. I'm thrilled and it's a beautiful building and beautiful facilities, so thanks. So, I work in a company called DCC. We're headquartered in Dublin in Ireland. We're a FTSE 100 business. Our market cap is in around 5 billion. We've a turnover of about 18 billion. We operate across North America, Europe and Scandinavia, UK, Ireland. So quite a diverse business. I started out as a chartered accountant. I've had kind of a career that has moved to quite diverse, well, industries or experiences, let's say. So, starting out in finance, we've gone into risk management, compliance and more recently as finance director for an energy division within dcc. And the opportunity came up to go and get into treasury. And what I found from my general experience was I was lacking some external financing, fundraising experience. So when we chatted about the role, and one of the things that was really important to me was to go down that road of having that external view. I found that in a lot of the finance roles, compliance, risk management roles, a lot of them were very internal focused. And then going into a Treasury role gave that opportunity to have both the operational exposure within a business and then to have that external focus with other stakeholders. And that could be banks, it could be bond investors. It's a whole different array. While still being in contact deeply with all our businesses.

And when you first went into treasury, if you like, and you'd heard of treasury and everything else, I know, we talked about it on the podcast. It was quite a step for you as well, wasn't it? You'd had your internal relationships, but then how do you make that transition? Because a lot of people here have been treasury specialists for a number of years. How did you make that transition?

Yeah, I think the biggest one was about building the relationships and the trust. So I managed reasonably small treasury function before, but nothing to the scale of what DCC does and the amount of, say, currencies and banks that we would deal with. So I spent quite a lot at the start of the role, just literally going out, meeting all our stakeholders, as many as I could, so quickly as I could, and having open, engaging discussions and then doing it within the business as well. About, because, like, our customers within the business are the businesses. Right. So asking for their feedback and then within the team, of course, spending a lot of Time with the team, talking to them, finding out what areas, where's the friction, what works well, what doesn't work well, what would you like to see done in the next two year window or thereabouts? So it was really interesting. I think the biggest step was just building those relationships, as I say, and getting that external lens. It was something I think I fell into reasonably well. Not felt it was part of my skill set to get into. So it was something to step into quite easily, I think.

I'm going to talk more about the business and how you the treasury aspects of it in a minute, but we're going to go across to Mags and Mags, you're going to talk us through that natural start in treasury within surveying.

That's right. So I'm Mags, I'm the global treasurer for Duracell. I've been there for nine years. I actually started my working career as a quantity surveyor in construction and everyone always asks me, how did you make the leap from being on a site in a hard hat to being the treasurer? And actually it's quite a lot of similarities, believe it or not, because it makes no difference if you're counting euros or you're counting bricks, you're numerate, right? Number one, Number two, you're forever writing reports to the client, you know, on cost and how that's building against the forecast. Well, we're constantly forecasting in treasury, aren't we? And then it's being part of a team. So in the construction world, you've got an architect, you've got engineers, you've got quantity surveyors, you've got contractors, subcontractors. So it's managing all of those relationships. So unfortunately I, when I went into construction, they were going through a bust and it's very. A boom bust cycle and I got bit fed up and I said, I can't be doing with being made redundant every five minutes. So I said, what do I fancy? I thought, I've always liked the idea of money markets and fx. And so I managed to get my first role at Waste management and that really was an entry level role, reconciling effects confirmations with the bank confirmation. It was dreary, but I actually quite enjoyed it because we were exposed to offices in other locations working with the bank, also risk management, and it was really about making those connections and working well as a team. So from there I went on into an engineering company and I've always worked for either US owned or UK PLCs and they've always been listed and the exception to that is. And they've always been in the public domain. So the exception to that is where I am now at Duracell, which is privately owned. It's very different to anywhere I've ever been before. No hedging investments of excess cash need to be prioritized in government bonds. So they're risk adverse. And it's all about generating cash for the long term.

Can you explain who. Berkshire Hathaway. And then you and I were on the podcast together and I spoke to Technom about one of the things with dcc, but we'll come back to that. But with you guys, as you say, you have these na. You don't hedge, you have natural hedging between all the different global businesses.

Right.

What? And that stayed on the tape. What was that?

Yes. So being such a large company with billions of cash and such a diverse number of companies, we don't hedge because number one, our hedges might be counterproductive, an exposure of another company. So we might be counter hedging something. But so we're relying heavily on the portfolio effect. And also there's an inherent cost to every hedge you take out.

Yeah, fair enough.

We're going to come back to more of the points, Philip. We're going to head across to yourself and you've had your tour with. Your career is like global finance companies, if you like. Right. The way giants. Can you talk us through from. Yeah. Where you are now and then give us a walkthrough.

Maybe I'll start at the beginning because I've done 35 years now in treasury, but I fell into it completely by accident like a lot of people. Originally I was intending to be a lawyer. I'm still probably a frustrated lawyer. And I would say over the first 10 years of my career I've worked across a number of different nationalities. Japanese companies, US companies, UK companies. First 10 years of my career at a job, like a lot of people as they.

Yeah.

As they go through their early 20s and early 30s. I then stepped out of the corporate world and into the consulting world. I can see one of my old colleagues here and spent a couple of years in that. And coming out of that and reflecting was actually the starting point of my treasury career of actually looking to take some deliberate decisions about how I develop that career over time. I then worked for three large listed companies over the course of the last 20 odd years. O2 SAP, Miller and for the last eight years with OCI.

And just before you go to those as you SAB Miller obviously drinks company and those couple of moves obviously went through a big period of transition. That was the role prior to oci. And then if you maybe again some people will know who oci, a lot of people won't. SAB Miller. We know beer, we love it. So talk us through what those were like.

I mean, SAB Miller was obviously a global company, second biggest beer company in the world and went on a incredible journey from its South African roots. When I joined, we were a team of five people with an incredibly decentralized outlook on life. Everything run out of the beer regions. And by the time we finished, we were a team of 50 people with a totally centralized and I think hopefully my colleagues would agree, very high performance treasury team oci, obviously SAP Miller, sorry was taken over and the team split out into various different directions. And I actually have all of my current team are ex SAP Miller and you will find pockets of them around the place.

And who are oci?

OCI is a Dutch listed fertilizer and chemical company which up until quite recently had global operations, us, Middle East, Europe. But it's majority owned by a guy called Nasse, whereas most people probably would only know him as the owner of Aston Villa. And he's built that company from a standing start in around about 2008 up to a, at its peak, about a 7 billion market cap coming out of what was originally a construction company. So it's an interesting beast because you've got a sort of private equity sponsor type element to it. He is the majority owner but we are listed, which introduces a lot of complexities into particularly within the treasury world. And as Declan was talking earlier, as you manage your external relationships. Yeah, thank you.

So Mags, what we're going to start, we'll start with yourself and I know that you've done ACT study and studying qualifications. We when I was explaining to Declan earlier that we've got a whole mix here of levels of people, we've got some of the beginning treasury analysts, should they study, what should they do and what difference is made to their careers versus also those who are making a step further up the ladder. What difference did qualifications make to you? And then we'll go to Philip and then we'll come back to you, Declan, about why do you think they're important and things.

So when I first started in treasury and all my knowledge was gained through experience and as I went along and promoted myself, what I realized a lot of the time was I didn't fully understand why we had to do it in a certain way or why there was different products in different places and what they all meant. And I felt that I was, I, I didn't have the round of knowledge, that background, that framework in which to be able to make a better informed decision on my, on a day to day basis. So doing the ACT exams really enabled me to focus on global ways that, that we work within treasury. There was a lot of focus on lockboxes and I was like, I don't even know what a lockbox is, but it expands your knowledge and allows you to be more informed and bring that to your role every single day.

Yeah.

And I felt that I benefited greatly from that. It was hard work, not gonna lie, but definitely worth the investment.

Okay, Philip, will go to yourself. You had law and then accounting. How did that dual discipline sort of help or did it not. Did it help or hinder something?

First of all, I think on the qualifications point. Yeah. For me personally, it wasn't a big part of my career trajectory. I did them but at a stage of my career where frankly I had already picked up a lot of the knowledge and what I found through most of my career is the vast majority of what you get, what you can deploy, what you can learn from actually comes on the job. Yeah. In terms of my background, yes, I've done law and accounting. For me, that has been phenomenally useful. I do find most people come in with a financial background, it's the logical entry route. But ultimately the work that we do within treasury is bound up in contracts. Everything that we do is bound up in contracts. I've got a colleague here who spends more time than he cares to think about negotiating is the contract. Every time you step into a loan arrangement, you're stepping into a 200 page document. And all the traps and all the tricks in there are nothing to do with the numbers, they're all to do with the documents. So for me it's been hugely useful having a legal background.

Yeah. Declan, to yourself.

Yeah, it's. I think it's a. It's not always straightforward to think what it would be like if you weren't trained chartered accountant or if you hadn't put yourself through other sort of diplomas or certificates over time. I think they've been enormously useful. I don't think I would have got the opportunities that I've had if I didn't have that formal kind of, let's call it the cv. And yes, spent a lot of time learning on the job and that's where probably the real learning is. But to get in the door, certainly initially I felt it was very beneficial to be an accountant to have the. Because it kind of proves your numeracy or you've been able to put yourself and pass difficult exams so you know how to work to timeline, how to work to prioritize things. And I think that's just a demonstration. Then later in your career it does become less important. Nobody could give a toss if I'm an accountant at this stage, I'd say, right. But like, you got to be able to do your job really well and you got to. So I just think it just depends where you are in your career. But I don't think I'd be here if I didn't have it initially.

And then also, you've all got teams and they work with you. I'll stick with yourself for a moment. Is that you've got multiple business units and actually I'm going to ask you. You're not meant to ask two questions, but you can explain for the audience how you and I talked about it when we had the podcast about how DCC goes in. You leave the businesses and the local management alone and their teams. But then how does that then come back into. And you. How do you make sure your treasury integrates with those different teams? Because I think that's an interesting challenge.

Yeah. So a little bit like Phil talked about having a decentralized business before you got your hands on it. And then you centralize everything. We're what we call a devolved business model. So we acquire quite heavily, generally every year. Could have 20 different acquisitions in a year. Generally bolt on. And so the one thing that really is held tight is the balance sheet in the group. So we do empower local businesses to remain local. We generally don't put our brand on businesses that we buy. If an entrepreneur builds a business, we like to retain that person because they've got the customer and supplier relationships that we want as well. But treasury, we get control of the cash and who has access to the cash from day one immediately. It's just. That's very unique in terms like other parts of the operations are not brought in centrally at all. So, for example, we don't. We operate on different ERP systems. We operate. It's. So what I would say is like, treasury is probably one of the few functions that gets in to all the finance teams around the world. And that's what makes it really interesting for people as well. You're literally operating. You could be talking to a Dutch business in one part of the day, French the next, North America later on. So it's really varied.

And you and I talked about the control framework around that. There is some soft touch guidance sort of thing. How would you describe it?

I suppose it depends on what level you want to look at it. So if you talk about capital allocation. Right. So if you're managing a business that DCC owns, you can't spend cash without us really knowing about it in the center. So you have to get approvals. All that happens. Right. As you'd expect, within treasury we are the gatekeepers of who has access, for example, to the electronic banking systems. We will manage all of those for our businesses. So nobody can gain access without my sign off. And I know, you know, I can see who has access to what. So there's segregation of duties and we're managing the risk of our cash in that way. So that's very tight and something we place a lot of importance on. I think it's slightly unusual as well because it's a lot of work that you may like. It's not grammar's work in that part of it, but it's absolutely necessary.

Yeah. Mags, over to you. When I placed you at Duracell and you're still thanking me for it. Thank you. We're still talking. It's okay. She's still happy. You inherited a team. How did you then get involved with those guys? And also where are they based sort of thing. And where are you based? Maybe you can explain that for the audience.

So I didn't join as the treasurer, I went in as the international Treasury Manager. And to give you some background, Duracell is actually a startup company. Although the brand's been around for 60 odd years, it was only carved out of P&G nine years ago. And they handed us the balance sheet and the P and L on 1st March 2016 and said, Here you go. So at that point it was all hands on deck. And we had numerous contractors, we had quite a big team at the time. The majority of them were placed in Chicago and I was actually the only one outside of Chicago at that time. And as we've stood the company up and matured because we want to simplify and automate our processes as far as possible. So the second CFO had a vision of a data lake where we would be self serving. We would go in and pull data rather than having to ask somebody to generate a report for you. And so during this transformation we went through several treasurers and now I'm the global treasurer, but I have a staff in Chicago still because that is head Office and I have an analyst that's based in Barcelona and I'm still in London. We do get help from other functions from time to time, but really we're quite a small team. We have flexibility to work wherever we want and we are having a core number of hours every day to catch up and ensure that things get done. So the team is very small and the company is still transforming, but it's really about automation and simplification to move away from all those manual tasks that we did on day one, which are not value added, and making sure that we're moving more towards the analysis to make better decisions or provide data to the board to make better decisions.

Philip, you built teams across treasury, if you like, throughout your career as well. What do you. Okay, we're a recruitment company, but that's not what the aim of it is. When. What do you look for as a treasurer when you're hiring or. And what are the red flags, if you like? What are the things that stand out for you, if you like? I remember we talked about this.

I think the first thing that I'm always looking at is capabilities rather than. We've had this conversation before. Some of the strongest people that I've come across have come in with very little tattoo, technical skills, a lot of common sense and a bit of get up go. And have made fantastic careers for themselves. So it's capability, personality, cultural fit, but not cultural fit. If there is one way of doing things, there's one. But a set of values that you work to, the technical skills element is. Can be taught. I've taken people on who know 30% of the job, virtually nothing in the job, as well as the classic 67, 70%. As long as you're building a team where there is a culture of cooperation and collaboration and people can understand the value, see what different types of capabilities bring to the overall team. That's how you know one of the key elements of developing a high performing team. So I look for a blend, but I'm looking at capabilities rather than skills.

And. But how do you measure or assess that when you're interviewing someone? Because it's. It's great. You're saying they collaborate, but how do you actually measure it or how are you assessing it?

It's difficult and bluntly, for the last few years I've slightly cheated because I've hired my old team members. So you put it right before. I think probably the best example, I was heavily involved in graduate recruitment when I was at sapm. We brought a number of people from the graduate program directly into the treasury team. So with zero experience whatsoever. Little bit, I'm afraid, is just feel, you know, as simple as I remember one particular conversation with HR where they were querying the psychometrics of a particular candidate and my response was, you sat in the room with me. This was the only person we had who had the light switched on, who was engaged, who was thinking, who was taking their time. So a lot of it is feel there isn't a lot of science. I've made some very, very bad hires in, in my time, but all of the good hires I've made have typically been based on an assessment of they have the drive, they have the capability, they have the intellectual curiosity to take themselves forward. That's what I'm looking for.

So in a, in about 15, 20 minutes, you're going to get the chance to actually interview these guys, ask some questions that you want to. So do start to think about them. We will cover AI in a bit because we've got to. Sorry, it's just the rules everyone says about it. Yeah, Chat. GPT told me to ask that question. I didn't want to ask it. Okay, Max, we're going to start with you, come back through Declan, then put it success, setbacks, turning points to your career. I know you and I, again, we talked about this a little bit on the podcast. Biggest challenges maybe since you've joined Duracell and how have you navigated them and then we'll do the same with Declan and then to you for.

So the biggest challenge at Duracell really has been the transition from the startup company to maturing to where we are now. And it's an ongoing thing, it's continuous development. So I now have one full time person and a point four of a shared resource. So it's really about ensuring that the tasks that we're performing every day are that not going to take the same time as they did back in the beginning. We can't, we don't have the time or the, or, or the resources to do it now. And I'm employing a lot of technology to ensure that we're not spending that time on a manual effort. And also the key to it is, as Frank was saying, Philip. Sorry. Philip was saying, having people with the right energy on your team that can be agile and adapt to new situations because no two days are the same in treasury and we're always putting out fire drills and the challenges are just being agile and being able to adapt and be flexible and have that energy and drive to keep Going, yeah, Declan, yourself?

Yeah. In terms of challenges in the, in within the treasury role, I think the main one, the main thing I observed when I stepped in was that there was a lot of manual work being done and a lot of hands touching various parts of flows, let's say. And one of the things that has been really important to me is that we build a Treasury function that is appropriate for the group and the ambitions of the group. And that means automating flows where you can. It means making sure that you don't have people who are getting completely bored in their job because it's a lot of inputting. Can some of that be taken off? And of course it can. The challenge with it is the things take a lot of time. So digital transformation takes time. You need to have the resources to do it obviously as well, and you need the partners to do it with. We've made massive progress, like extraordinary progress, where we were at like 15% of payments were automated two years ago. We're up at 90 now. So it's been phenomenal. But we've way more to do on it. And I think the other challenge which is linked to this is team engagement and making sure the team are performing, they're happy doing the work because you're in an environment of change and when you're throwing projects on top of existing workloads, it can be quite difficult. Right. It can be strained and I'm very conscious of that. So we've spent, I've spent a lot of time just trying to work on the communication involving the team in almost a democratic process of what are we going to work on, what are the three projects we're going to work on this year? I'm not overdoing us by having three and then executing on us. But as one of the frustration is it takes longer than I would have expected.

Yeah, you got it in place to get it.

You get things fully implemented.

Yeah. Philip, what's the journey been for you guys?

I've done two roles now where I've gone in and it's been literally a desk and a phone in a multi billion dollar business. And the ask is create a Treasury. And so the most important thing I found through all of the kind of scenarios that you both already mentioned is focus is focusing on what is important at that particular time and making choices, making decisions about what you can leave, what works. It may not work perfectly, it may not work particularly efficiently, but where can you get the wins that create the most impact early on, the most visibility early on? Because for two reasons one that gains you the credibility to continue to invest from whoever the capital allocators are. So you've got to get those wins are, but it also builds that energy within a team, whether you're starting with one person, two people, five people, whatever. If they can see the journey that is beginning to creep forward, if they understand and sorry, this is perhaps jumping ahead to one of your questions, but they understand and are bought into the journey, then you can achieve an incredible amount very, very quickly. You need that buy in and you need to be able to make sometimes quite difficult choices and to fight for those choices. I've had countless arguments with my CFO over the years on, I want you to do this. Yes, I know you do, but it actually works. It's fine. What we need to focus on is this and just be prepared to have those arguments.

And you say there's a journey to go on. That's. I was talking to someone the other day in our business group and they were going, oh, just want to do this. I said, none of it matters. Where do you want to get to? Because you. Otherwise you wander off here, oh, this sounds great. I said, but you want to get to with your journey to get to that successful treasury. As you said, you walked in, it's a desk phone, right, off you go. What's your checklist, first of all? And then what does good look? What does great look like? What's the end goal, if you like, in the checklist?

Right at the start it is, where are the potential disasters? What do we have to mitigate and get under control? The fires right at the start, what are the potential fires? What are the fires today? Bluntly, what are the things that could get me fired or my boss fired? We deal with those first. After that, it is so situation dependent. But I think there is a fair amount of, I wouldn't like to say bodging, but it's not far off. It's getting to a level of stability that you can then start to build and focus and look for those incremental improvements. The difficulty is, as you've mentioned, there is a journey and you want to describe a place to describe a target, but ultimately the journey never stops because what you're trying to do is to build teams which are based around continuous improvement, based around a restless energy. To always look to improve. For that, you have to empower your people. Obviously, it's all fairly standard. You have to allow them to make mistakes. You have to put the sort of protective blanket around them so that they can actually develop on that journey as individuals, because that's what again, creates the energy, creates the feedback loop that allows you to push and push.

Yeah, I want to stay with yourself. And then we'll come back through Mags and Declan. Obviously. I joked earlier, ChatGPT automation, it's everything. You go to every conference, everyone's doing it. But rather than just focusing on the now, where do you see it's going to change over the next three to five years? Three years, really? No one knows what it's going to be in five years. What. But what do you see? You've just talked about that journey and things like that. What difference are you seeing it or what are your thoughts? You've been through this a few times.

There's the obvious elements around automation and further thinning out of resources, et cetera, which worry me, because having an insufficient bench of talent coming through, having people who are not getting the experience at the early stage, I think will ultimately be adverse for the profession as a whole. But the opportunities around automation, of being able to analyze data in different ways, are clearly there.

I think one of the observations I've had from some of these live sessions, I did it. We had Dana Laidhold, global treasurer for nasdaq. One of the things they did was they implemented FX exposure management and they started it with this machine learning for them. They were doing it originally manually, then it became. They went into manually monthly and then it became weekly, daily, and then second by second and that. And she said it was. But there was a big human element and then it was slowly moving away, keeping tight controls over it. She talked about this live on our session and things. That was one of the ways they were doing. I think there's a lot of noise about, we can do this, we can do this, but actually still needs treasurers and treasury professionals to run the machine sort of thing as well and direct it. Mags, is that your. What are your sort of.

Yes, definitely, Mike, because we've brought in. We've broken down some very manual processes into step by step. For example, we manually upload certain FX rates that Reuters can't provide us. They're very exotic, so Paraguay, whatever, and also local legal rates that Reuters can't provide. So we. I had somebody that every day had to prepare this file and upload it into SAP. It took them maybe an hour because not all data is available at the same time. So that's not adding value. We were, you know, we were told about bots and I was like, I can see the potential here. So we have what we call the USA understands simplifying act. So we brought and broke down each piece of the process and we brought a bot in to do each piece of the process. But we didn't go big bang. We did allowed the bot to do part one, then part two, until we did all the different stages of the process now fully automated. But guess what? The bot gets sick. And that's why you still have to have that background, that knowledge, to understand where it's gone wrong and fix it.

But has it speeded it up?

Absolutely. There's days that we don't have to touch it. It's zero touch, but it's not all the time. I'd say 80% of the time. But as I said, the bot does get. Does get sick from time to time. It does, it does, it does, yeah.

Yeah. I think those points, particularly on when you're introducing automation and it still needs the human oversight and the knowledge are really important. When I think about the future of Treasury, I still think we start out, what's the purpose of treasury and what's the purpose of what we do in terms of supporting the company, supporting the group's growth? So you're still back to liquidity, working capital, risk management, managing your yields, your cost of capital, et cetera. There's a role definitely in AI in all of those, but it's another tool in the box. You still need to be able to make your decisions, you still need to have a team that know what they're doing, because I think you're dealing with one of the biggest risk areas in the businesses, the idea of cash going out the door or some wrong, real, really wrong analysis. The consequence of that is very, very high. So you do need your expertise. And yes, a machine can offer definite guidance and definite support and it can tidy up processes and workflows can be smoother and hopefully our team's time is freed up to be a bit more analytical instead of manually inputting. But, but ultimately we need to be on top of what is the ambition of the group. What, how are we serving that? And that takes human, and I think that takes human judgment and it takes analysis and thought. I can't see that moving away too fast at all.

Max, I'm going to come to you first for this and then we'll go to Philip and stuff. Hybrid working. Now, I've covered this on lots of these sessions, so I'm not going to deep dive too much. What I wanted to ask with yourself and then how do you, in this flexible working environment that we went from 100% in the office to not. But you were actually pre that actually. And you didn't have that experience, which is great. But how do you then ensure that treasury still has a seat at the table without that face to face or with a different measure, a different balance of it, first of all.

So it's all about building the network. I was very lucky that in my current role at Duracell and my prior role, I traveled extensively to every legal entity, sometimes many times, and also to head office in Chicago. So in Subsea, I was in Africa, Angola, Mozambique, Nigeria. And it's really understanding the challenges that your, the teams down there are facing every day. Because, for example, if you're not getting the numbers at a certain time on a certain day, there's a reason behind that and it's not because they couldn't be bothered. It's because they probably didn't have Internet for two hours. So it's really important to know the challenges that the teams are facing from day to day and understanding that and trying to put workarounds in place to support the difficulties that they're facing. So. And also that face to face is worth everything. It's learning about the person, their family, what they enjoy doing and remembering that. And then they show that you've really considered them and thought about them and they're more motivated to work for you. But now I've gone to the other extreme where I am now 100% working from home. So I'm lucky to have built those networks and had that, that experience of being with people. But I really do think that the younger cohort now really need to be at least in the office half of their time because they're not going to get those experiences. They're not going to have those conversations where they pick up something that they wouldn't have done on an email.

How do you maintain that culture with your guy that's in Barcelona, for instance?

Yeah.

How do you.

Instead, so when I onboarded him, obviously it was in the middle of COVID I had to speak to him every single day because he was probably the only person he was speaking to. And I did say to him, sebastian, we don't need to talk every day if we don't want to. He said, no, I want to. So I maintain that close contact with him and also with my resource in Chicago. We are constantly pinging each other. This is going on. Can you show me how to do that? You know what, can we have a quick call? Because I'm not quite sure. So it really is still maintaining that contact, even if it's virtual over zoom. And so I still don't see him much today, but I still feel that we're very close.

Philip, for yourself, how do you maintain that sort of cohesion or brand if you like, or.

Yeah, my, my team is now fully remote. Seen in the office maybe once or twice a month at most. It's pretty much exactly the same as you've done. The key thing is I try and keep at least one call a week is just a general catch up. No specific agenda, no specific project that is attached. So we're all on calls with one person, two people, five people, where you just focus on one issue. Um, so it's just having what, one piece of time trying to replicate the kitchen conversation or the water cooler conversation where it could be anything, it could be work, personal life, general catch up. What are you doing on a holiday? Is just to try and keep that level of sort of personal communication as opposed to every single thing being. I'm busy, you're busy. Let's focus on the piece of work that for me is very important. I find I've not had to manage with one team the transition. I've worked with teams which have been fully office space. I've worked with remote teams and as I'm lucky enough to have a team that have all worked with each other before talking to people in other firms, managing that transition across some of the issues that you've just described is incredibly difficult. And again, I don't have the answers to how you do that successfully. But from a maintenance point of view, make sure you keep personal contact as well as just work contact and the.

Balance for you guys or how does it work?

Yeah, so we have a three day week in the office. So two days. So two days you can work from home. It's quite interesting. I had a. An experience during the year where I had purposely left that three days to, you know, to be at your discretion. And I was soft about it. Right. And from disengaging with the team, it came out that actually there was a preference by some that I name the days, just given the days and that's fine. And they come in and then I was. That was. Wasn't not everybody like that because the days didn't work for everybody and so on. But I thought it was a really interesting one that having a definitive days where people can come in, spend time together was really important. And you can see a benefit of it as well in my mind anyway. And I love being with my team and I think it's generally shared. Phil, when you mentioned you use a call once a week to have silence. Even when we're in the office, we actually don't do like. Because you're like, everyone comes in and sits down, does their row and you may not really have a personal conversation all week. So I thought that might be a takeaway for me. But yeah, so I enjoy people. I think people enjoy coming in. We often have team meetings. I bring in externals from within the group or otherwise to talk to the team and we sit in the boardroom together. And I just think there's a lot of value in that. And also just being in the building because we are a Treasury function. In a head office, you could be in the kitchen and the CEO walks in. No, you could just. You end up having a chat, you know, it's good.

And you have to make them coffee.

He likes a particular type of coffee.

So he's so maintaining. You guys have all talked about maintaining connection with the business. And when I was in New York, there was a great session we did live there at Summer Simmons, she was there, treasurer of Victoria's Secret. She talked about how she went out to the business and got the team together. But they did a Corporate Treasury 101. They went out to them and they said, what do you guys think treasury is? A few of them were like, what? Who are you? And that's what she did. She took it out to the masses and it was brilliant. And then actually the other panelists, Sandra and Frank, they were there and they just went, we're doing this. We're copying that idea, we're borrowing that idea. How do you guys maintain a decent enough connection again, particularly with your devolved business and things like that, to make sure those guys know what treasury is? Or do you just tell them what treasury is and they follow too? And then we'll come back through you.

Guys mags and stuff.

I think we support the businesses on a day to day basis. So the businesses that we own and work with know a lot about treasury in one capacity. So they will know that we have, you know, they can work with certain banking partners. We make the instructions we control so they know the operational side. What the businesses really haven't seen until probably we started speaking about it a bit more last year was some of the kind of the funding of the group side. For example, we had our first public bond issuance last year. So that was a great opportunity to go out and talk to the finance community. So, for example, there's a finance conference that has 200 people from across the world coming in and it's. So it was a great time to say treasury is not just about, you know, your operational banking or your bank account. It's actually this is the other stuff that we do and you throw in the bond stuff and of course people love hearing about issuances and it's. And you bring them through the day of the allocation day or the pricing day and it's all fascinating stuff. So afterwards you have people going, we had no idea that's what treasury did. So I think there's a point of absolutely being better, communicating outwards. I know it's something that I'm the team and we want to do better and we can definitely do more in it.

Thanks.

Similar to what you said about the Victoria's Secret lady, we have a rolling program of what we call value architect training, which is we develop trainings around different subjects. It's not just finance but marketing, for example, have done several trainings so it's about cross fertilization of departments and functions and learning about what they're doing and also them learning about us. But more recently I've been providing specific trainings to the service center because they, they're, they're split into groups AP ar. They don't see the joined up view and they don't understand how correspondence banks are taking money and also how the payment systems work and how it clears. So I developed a training around that and have delivered that. And all of the trainings that we provide are all shared on a LinkedIn learning site that we have internally. So when you're onboarding a new person, you can direct them to the link and they can just help themselves download it. Right. So I, I think developing training and not just general ones, but specific. So I had another scenario where we had an issue with a payment where somebody approved something that they didn't and they were quite new to the company. So I was asked to deliver a training around segregation of duties, how we separate the inputting from the approval. And also it was like a refresher because although a lot of people are still there from day one nine years ago, we still have had a lot of turnover and a lot of new people. So it's good to keep that going and it's good for me also to rethink about what we're doing. Does it still make sense? Yeah.

Yes. I think for me the best advocates for treasury are not necessarily treasury themselves. It's actually the people that you're working with in the business unit. So one of the things that we did within OCI is inevitably as we're, you know, we work run with a business partner model, we're working with individuals within the individual units and we will bring them into treasury so they actually become part time, not officially part of the treasury team. They sit there in our team meetings, they become the advocates for us. So they see more than they need to see as related to their business, but they see the value that is is being brought by the treasury operation and they are the advocate for treasury with their own business units. I find that is much more powerful than treasury wandering in. Yeah, there was another model that we used to use at SAB which is not dissimilar but it was, it was termed you earn the right. So you go and solve other people's problems for them to the point that they actually start picking up the phone to you because they see that you are useful but you put the hard yards in first to solve their problems rather than coming in as I am Treasury. But I've always found the best advocates that we've had other finance people, operational people, systems people that have worked with us and then get included in more work or even stuff that is outside of their normal domain.

Our podcast is sponsored by icd. ICD are an independent platform trusted by thousands of treasury professionals worldwide to manage short term investments. One global treasurer recently told me it was one of the smartest technology decisions they've made. No license fees, rapid setup and tangible returns. If you're looking for a smarter, simpler way to manage your liquidity, then head to find out more at our partners, page treasuryrecruitment.com partners and find out much more. Let's get back to the episode we're going to I'm going to revolve that with another question in a minute, but before I do that, the question I'm going to put to the three of you I'll give a few seconds to think about it. I'll start with yourself Deck. Then the minute we do Q and A and you get a chance to do that because we've also got some great takeaways from the panel. But here, if someone is sitting out there and thinking how did you guys get to where you are? What's the one piece of advice they won't really hear in a textbook or maybe I'll get told that you guys have thought about. So I'll give you a few few seconds to think about that one. I'm not just going to drop that straight on you. It's Going to go across to you. Katie, where are you? So Katie's got a microphone there. Might questions please from you lovely audience. Oh, we'll go straight to our host. I'll go straight to our host because I want him to let me have a drink later. There you go. I promise I will, yeah. Thank you for some really fascinating insights about developing internal networks and relationships, but just keen to hear from you for the benefit, possibly the more junior members who are here around developing that external network, those external relationships. What you look for in service providers, including, dare I say lawyers, but also banks, bondholders. What's that external facing piece that people should be really mindful of? Okay, I'll start with you, Mags, because you got Mike and I'll steal it back.

So they need to be mindful that it's not a one size fits all proposition. When you're working with a bank, you're always going to get the sales. Oh, we've got this new tool, we're going to show it to you. It's wonderful. You know, they have to understand the position that you're in and your policies where we wouldn't actually be able to use that tool potentially. And it's just, it's also just being aware of how your business is run, so doing their homework, doing their research, rather than coming to us blindly and saying, let's do xyz. So it's really about understanding the business and being focused specifically on your needs.

Love it.

Firstly, I couldn't agree more with those two points. Certainly on the service provider side, I'm looking for a commercial outlook as much as technical skills, which I think is pretty much the point that Max hit on as well. Do they understand what we are trying to achieve? How are they looking to add value to us in a way that is allowing us to come, then come back to them and solve further problems. In terms of network building, I don't think it's really a great deal different to how you build your internal networks. You find people, you talk to people, you will work out the people relatively quickly that you can have a degree of trust in and you build from there.

But also you make the effort to come to these evenings.

Right.

It's November. Right. Sign up.

Okay.

All right.

Yeah. So very similar. Again, I think the. When working with partners, there's a huge value in openness and honesty. So where there's. You can. My experience is there's a lot of people who claim to be able to do a lot of stuff and when you get into scoping something that you want done or something that you think should happen then you might hit a few roadblocks along the way and it's very disappointing. I think the. So it's that building the credibility, building the relationship with somebody, it takes time as well. It can take quite a long time sometimes, but it's always worth it. I think choosing your partners that you're working with, it's just fundamental to your success. But we would definitely work, try and work with the lead, the leading kind of people in the, in the world or in the field that we're looking at in terms of where the network it's exactly events like this and others and also, you know, I think just there are like the ACT for example is a great event for us and, and just being open to a few, the odd cold call as well. Sometimes they work out.

Yeah. Who I saw a couple of other hands go up. There you go. We'll let Charlie go. He's come all the way from the US from New York for us.

Hi Ol, Quick question, more curious.

How are you guys managing your cash forecasting on the day to day and are you guys utilizing a TMS system.

Such as Kyriba for that on the panel?

Yeah. So we have a reasonably rudimentary cash forecasting process. It works. Is it perfect? No. Do we use any particular system for us? No, we use, we do have like, we like our exit. Right. Of what I was talking about earlier. I'm trying to move away from it a bit as much as I can. It's, you know, it's a work in progress. It's a work in progress for sure.

So at startup we put in TMS by G Treasury and because it failed, mainly because it's too US focused, too domestic, it couldn't cope with international bank holidays. There was various limitations and we invested heavily in building this thing and it didn't work. So that went away. And then we also tried to implement SAP treasury module, but that was some time ago, before AI and the difficulty with that was it couldn't really cope with the ar. It would say, okay, you've got all these invoices due to be paid today, this is a due date so you can receive this. That's not how it works. Corporates all have weekly payment runs, there's deductions, there's other things going on. So it really couldn't handle the AR piece. So we went away and had a bespoke Excel model built, very simple model and we are always looking at continuous improvement. So we've now got bots that's going out to the banks, pulling in bank statements, going into SAP, pulling in ar, AP data. So it's really reduced the burden on those departments and on us. So it's a much less effort involved and it provides all the information that we need. It provides a comparison to a 13 week forecast, but it also gives you where we landed last week and the week before so we can see our progress.

Yeah, love it.

Similar. We have direct linkage and the ERP to our treasury system. We have automated sweeping of balances and flows. I suppose the one bit that we've led over the top is again, the relationships between the cash management team and the business units. So there is an overlay normally done on a weekly basis, which is sense checking exactly what is coming out of the machine. That for us is absolutely critical for all the reasons you just described.

We've got time for one more question, then we're going to do takeaways. We'll do David and you can. The great thing is you get to ask our panelists in the bar. So it's great. Yeah. Sorry, David Hannigan. Tis Quick question, Philip.

You touched on it earlier, the conflict sometimes with cfo.

I just wondered if there was any.

Specific examples you could give for where maybe you've reached an impasse.

Conflict, discussions. Okay. Discussion. A heated discussion maybe, and how you've.

Particularly dealt with that situation.

Oh, I didn't give him that question.

Yeah, it gets interesting. Obviously, the closer you get to the cfo, the longer you work with them, the more open the discussions that you can have. So I think the approach in the early years by career at oci, the first two or three years was very factually based. This is the position, this is what I am recommending. These are the reasons why if you know something that I don't know, then fine, let's discuss it. But bluntly, you pay me to come up with the recommendations on the facts at hand. So the only reason that you'd be disagreeing is something that I don't know. Later on, as I was more embedded in the strategic thinking of the company and it becomes much more. Less a question of numbers and more a question of opinion about the direction that we were going in, it became more fundamental. It's what are we trying to create? What are the key focus areas? And I think as with any relationship, once you build up. I had the same CFO for seven years. The amount of ability I had to influence an agenda was based on the trust that he had that I was providing an opinion Whether it was counter, but for good reasons. There would be reasons behind it and he would take the time, time to try and understand where I was coming from. But it was built around the length of the relationship to start with. When you haven't got that relationship, you just have to put the facts out there and then if the decision goes against you, you prosecute to the best of your ability.

Max yourself.

I think a lot of it's education. We. They don't know everything. We are in treasury, the subject matter experts here, it's really about, as you've just said, about trust. But now, Philip, building the trust and giving them good reason why, for example, we shouldn't be doing something and being confident about that and backing it up with examples. And it's all about as well, the personality. I've been through three CFOs at Duracell and each one have been very different. It's adapting to their style of management and, and leadership and maybe being more direct or less direct, depending on who they are. But it's really about delivering data and convincing them that your stuff.

Yeah. Not a lot to add to that because in fairness, it's about. It's about that relationship and being pretty much fact based. When you're presenting. If you need to present a case or if it's a little bit softer about a vision, then I think that's. I mean, that's a judgment call.

Right.

I think that's about a relationship and fostering a good relationship. I try to have a very open dialogue with the CFO of the group. And it is. And I think I don't really have. There's very rare that there will be an instance where we don't see eye to eye. We're very much aligned and I think maybe, maybe that's fortunate. Right.

Okay.

Now, I can see you're quite a thirsty crowd. So we're going to go to our takeaways from our lovely panelists, maybe pick out some of these. Don't forget, we have got the one piece of advice you won't hear in a textbook. That's going to be our closing for today. But, Declan, your key takeaways. You got them. What did you say?

Yeah. When asked to put these together, it was more just trying to summarize what is it or what way. And it's the way more my mind works than anything else. So I would always have tried to visualize where I wanted to be, what sort of role it would be, what sort of skill sets would require, and then trying to find those Opportunities along the way to build those. Not always knowing that you'd end up maybe as head of treasury, but knowing that it would be good for you at some capacity at some time, and then mentioning the calculated risk where you might like. In the past, I was offered roles that definitely threw me out of my comfort zone. And just you have people who believe in you, so take it. It's a calculated risk, but, you know, it's likely to work out. Back yourself on that and then just maintaining that positive perspective, not getting dragged into any kind of cultural negativities if they exist, and just keeping that positive outlook, I think, is really, really important.

Fantastic, Mags.

I think key things that I've come across in my career is, number one, being resilient. We all go through difficult times. We've all been challenging situations. Companies going into liquidation or almost going into liquidation and really having to fight every day. So it's building up that resilience. And learning from the best experience is often the worst experience. Having to say no to something so easy to say, yeah, we've got tons of cash, let's do it. So the second thing I think as well is like embracing change, because no two days are the same in treasury and no two companies are the same. It's all about, you know, taking direction from the business, doing your best to support them and guide them through every day. But I think my number one takeaway here is be authentic, be yourself. Actually care about people and their families and their situation, and that's how you get the best out of people.

Yeah, I think probably two things I'd focus on. One is, and it's come up a couple of times during the. During this chat is around trust. And I enjoy working with people that I trust. So the most important thing is I try and focus on my relationships, whether it's with colleagues, whether it's with subordinates, whether it's with outside third parties, is, am I doing everything that I can do to ensure that they trust me? Because then they will want to work with me. And if I trust them and I want to, you get into an environment then that you can achieve amazing things if you have that trust. So it's trying to build that trust and everything which comes out of what are your values, holding true to your values, being reliable, not just in delivering the work, but in being there to challenge, to provide opinion. There's a whole. Everything comes down to trust. The other thing I'd say is it's a tough career. If you're going to do this for the long run, it is tough. So enjoy it. You have to enjoy it because there will be, as you both mentioned, some be very challenging times. If you don't enjoy it, find something else.

Okay, mine. This is. You've seen this. This is. I've got networking with purpose building real connections. You've got all this when you are. Actually, we gave a. A task, if you like, when we're in Houston. There were a. Was a guy that came to me. He hadn't had much experience of the area and only recently got started networking in Houston. Wasn't very good at it. And I said, the challenge is, before you leave tonight, you need to make five connections on LinkedIn. And it doesn't mean you connect with me. You've actually got to talk to them about their jobs, find out something about them, give them something about you and make those five connections. And he came up to me at the end, he went, mike, I've got eight. I said, what? I met eight people. And they actually. He was giving of himself and then they gave back. So actually he built those connections and with actual authenticity, as we've talked about here, I think visibility, I think, put your hands up, you guys here. Sometimes you're invisible. You do a terrible job. I do these weekly videos and one of the key things, this most recent one was a treasurer's tale and a few people laughed at it. And I was like, it's based on you lot because you do a really good job and then you go home and you switch off your lap and that's it. You don't tell anyone about it. You, You've saved your company millions. You've saved them from going bust. You've done this and no one knows. It's like a leaf in the forest. No one knows. You've done a decent job, actually say about it. Oh, but Mike, it's confidential information. No, it's not. What you can do is update your LinkedIn profile, tell people about it, put your hand up to go on a panel, be visible. That's one of the key bits. And then again, that comes down to also this. Tracking your wins. Can just about see that. Tracking your achievements. So actually, Emma from. Emma Haywood from Dowlace, amazing lady. She emailed, she was on the podcast. And I said, how do you do it? She said, I'm terrible at it, but I've got better. Said, okay, what's your secret? She went, I email myself. I mean, okay, that's a bit of a weird way to do it, Emma. You can say, no, I email myself. On a Friday, what I've achieved, what the team have achieved and what we've contributed to, the company drops it and it goes into a little file. Anytime the CEO, CFO walks up, you know, they're having a coffee. How are you going on? How are you doing? Oh, well, we've done this, this and this. Oh, really went last week before. Boom. She's got it there in front of her and that will help you with the visibility. So just coming back to my panel briefly, because I hate to finish on me. Piece of advice you won't hear in a textbook or a piece of advice you give to the audience sort of thing. We'll start with you, Declan. You know, what would you tell these guys?

There's so many. We've covered so many things today. Right. So I understand, Zelba. I think it's a. All sorts of things jotted down for this, but I'm going to bring it down. I think it comes down to something that was mentioned earlier, is the focused and purposeful decisions for your own careers or for what you're doing. It's very easy to get into a role and stick with it, but I think trying to improve all the time, develop yourself, and it can be very hard work, obviously, but I think that's really what it comes down to.

Max.

Yeah, I would say working hard, like I said, put your hand up to take on additional responsibility, additional projects. Make sure you make yourself available to help other people. So one of the things I'm doing at the moment is mentoring some colleagues that are not actually in finance to hand over the experience that I've had, how I've dealt with certain situations and to guide them. So it's about helping others, not just yourself thinking about others and how by improving them, you are actually improving yourself.

I agree with both of those, but I'd say that one additional thing, perhaps we haven't touched on enough earlier, is around praise at every point. We all celebrate the big wins. We don't necessarily celebrate the little wins. And ultimately, you are only as good at the team that is either your team or the teams that you are working with. Give credit where it's due. Make sure people get credit that ultimately supports you and makes them feel good about themselves.

So all of my panel have touched on networking, and that's the one of the key things. You've got an opportunity now to actually properly network with each other, so you're going to get to make those connections, like I've said. So you can set yourself a bar of meeting at least five people, which is a key thing. Now, one of the good things we've. Lovely. Kristen. He's made it so that it used to be we were drinking on this floor. Now you have to go with the floor above. And before any of you think you can just sneak off, we've moved your coats upstairs. So good luck with that. You have to get up there to get your coat. So we're going to make sure. And then we're going to. But we're going to switch off the elevator so the escalators. But yeah, so your coats are upstairs. All that remains is put your hands together. Amazing. Panel, please. Now we drop the mic and we're done. Sour o'. Clock. There you go. Thank you very much. Today's episode of the Treasury Career Corner was brought to you with the support of our partners, icd. If you're looking for a smarter way to manage your short term investments, ICD's independent portal gives you access to a full range of investment products, integrated analytics and a simple centralized platform built specifically for Treasury. If you head over to treasury recruitment.com partners, you can learn more and we'll be able to connect you with the right person ICD for both you and your business. Many thanks for listening to the show and thanks for your continued support.