How Treasury Teams Can Work Remotely with Bruce Edlund

Foreign 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 built their careers, where they are now, where they see both themselves and treasury profession. Going to next this week's show, joined by Bruce Edlund, senior director and assistant treasurer at Citrix now Citrix Systems, American multinational software company, cloud computing technologies, very much relevant in the current time. Going through all this virus, you know, stay at home lockdown as it were. And that's one of the reasons why I'm talking quickly because we've got, as Bruce and I were just talking about, I've got neighbors with kids bouncing on trampolines and I'm trying to keep this moving along. So if you do hear background noise listeners. There you go, that's the real world. You know, it's not normally like this, but it is this brave new world. Now Bruce himself, assistant treasurer at Citrix, you'll be able to see his details. He's got amazing experience, you know, in some of the stuff he's done. Before DirecTV there was global Cash Management, Walmart. So he's got some really big nice names. Originally started on the dark side, obviously started in banking. We'll let him off for that guys, it's all right. But Bruce, you can start your journey if you would, discovering. Well, you started economics and friendship in California State. Bring us up today and then I'll interject with loads of questions. So sir, over to you, it's your show.

Okay, thanks Mike. Yeah, it's definitely been a journey. Took me some time to figure out sort of where I wanted to head in my career. So like you said, I ended up finishing my undergrad with an economics and French double major and wasn't really sure where to go from there, but headed back to Europe, had some experiences there and spent some time on FX trading floor at a bank in Brussels and really enjoyed that. And from that experience decided to get an MBA and found the best school that I thought I could get into with my limited experience with a bit of international experience and that was Thunderbird, which is a top ranked international MBA and really enjoyed that, learning about finance, things related to corporate treasury. When I finished there, I felt like the best experience would be to go and work for a bank and be exposed to, you know, working with a lot of different companies. So I'm, I'm dating myself. But it was nations bank at the time, which, you know, which is now bank of America. And yeah, I'm coming from the dark side of my recovering investment banker. So I ended up after some rotations at a team in Miami, Florida doing investment banking in Latin America and it was really interesting time, great experience traveling around, working on lots of different kinds of deals. I guess I would say from a personality point of view the sort of the sales aspect wasn't really my favorite thing. So I started doing some soul searching and thinking, well what I really want to do. And I kept coming back to my experience at Thunderbird and things that I liked, you know, in my classes and I thought corporate treasury would be a good place to go and typical of an investment banker, full of confidence, you know, I went out applying to some really big positions which I didn't get calls back on.

Troy, how did you hear about treasury by then? Because you'd been bank of America and you already been at RBC and Standard and been through those by that stage or not.

Yeah, all of those, all those banking experience had basically been investment banking type roles and advisory and you know, I could see how treasury worked at companies and I, and I knew people working in corporate treasury so, so I thought that would be a good fit. So I started looking for some positions and like I said, I mean I kind of, you know, a little too much ego and you know, went for some positions that I wasn't really qualified for at the time. But then you know, I found a place at DirecTV Latin America in Fort Lauderdale and started really learning the nuts and bolts of treasury cash management. We went through chapter 11 at the time so really got focused on managing cash day to day. That evolved. The company came out of Chapter 11, News Corp bought our parent company and they moved everything to New York and I wasn't interested in going there and that's when I joined Citrix. So this is back in, in 2004 when I first joined Citrix and really loved the company. The fact that it was global technology company and we were really doing everything in treasury in a small team, cash management, investments, FX hedging, stock buyback. Didn't really have any debt at the time but really enjoyed it. So treasury really seemed to be my thing. I did kind of start to get tired of South Florida and that's when I left to join Walmart and I moved to Bentonville, Arkansas and Walmart as everyone probably knows is one of the biggest companies in the world. So that was quite an interesting experience. I was on the global cash management team and really learned a ton and worked with some great people but I think people see like in their careers, you know, Things either feel really right or there are certain things that don't feel quite right. So you're always kind of looking for, like, what's the next thing that I should do to just get that right sort of niche. And I don't know, for me, Walmart was maybe a little too big. You've really got to sort of know how to manage, you know, politically. Literally thousands of treasury people around the world to get things done.

So you would direct a global treasury, weren't you? So explain again for the listeners. You'll remit if you like, because you would keep some of these systems. You know, you got really strong systems bent to your background, but you've also got wider than that. So, again, you know, you were overseeing how many people?

Well, I was overseeing a small team in Bentonville, but you're relying on teams around the world, really. Thousands of people. You know, Walmart obviously is a retail company and so you have to have treasury people on the ground in every country handling actual cash, bank accounts everywhere. So it's really a huge operation. Whereas like a lot of other companies, like tech companies, you have quite smaller teams and things are sort of more automated. You don't have as many people.

Yeah, it does. But then with Walmart, as you said, you sort of. You enjoyed it for a period of time, but then you sort of. You were called back. So I think. So, you know, again, for the listeners, it's quite an interesting one. You were Citrix, Walmart and then came back to Citrix. Was it same company, just different, you know, a few years later? Or how did it come back? Because again, people listening would go, wow, that's a bit. To return to the same company. That's quite unusual.

Yeah, it is. It's interesting. You know, when I left Citric, the. Really, the only reason I left was that I was tired of South Florida. And some people especially, you know, maybe if you're sitting in London where the weather's maybe a little dreary and gray, people think, are you. Are you crazy? Why did you leave South Florida? But when you. When you live in South Florida year round, believe me, it's. It's not as great as it seems when you're just there for a few days on vacation. So I really just left Citrix because I was tired of South Florida and didn't think it was the greatest place to raise kids. So living in Bentonville was a good situation, I think, for my family at the time. But I wasn't 100% in love with my job. I mean, I Liked it, but it wasn't like, like the top. And so my former colleague that Citric contacted me one day out of the blue, very innocently in fact, you know, how are you? How are things going? And then, you know, at the end of the conversation they said, hey, you know, your old position opened back up, you know, would you be interested in coming back? And I was really flattered that, that they thought of me and I was interested in returning, but I really didn't want to move back to South Florida. But Citrix being Citric, we enable mobility. That's really what we're about. And so we really work to set up this position where I'm remote most of the time, but then typically, except for this period with coronavirus, I travel to the office once a month for a few days. So it was really kind of the perfect setup because I still knew many of the people at the company. We really have low turnover. So I knew my boss, I knew my colleagues, I knew the CFO and lots of other people. So it was really an easy decision to go back to a company that I really enjoyed working for.

Was there any nervousness about the way, not the way it might be viewed, but you did four and a half years away and you know, or was it just like you want to progress yourself and did you feel that you were still progressing or the company, Citrix and Citrix changed in that time?

It's interesting because when I was at Walmart, I was doing some work on Tableau, if people know what that is. It's sort of like a reporting system and I saw some statistics on growth companies and I'd seen that that Citrix had doubled again while I was gone. When I started in 2004, it was about 750 million in revenues. It doubled in the five years where I worked when I worked there. Well, it doubled again while I was at, at Walmart and I was really impressed and I actually sent our, our CFO at the time a nice little message and he responded. And Citrix always had a, this place in, I don't know, in my heart, I really just enjoyed working there. And so it had doubled and I had grown because I'd had this experience at Walmart. So I had seen a lot of new things and gotten to of a lot of different things that I hadn't seen at Citrix. So coming back, it wasn't a super easy decision because you're going from a really large company, you know, back to fairly small company in comparison. But it just really felt like the right thing to do. And I really like the culture and what we do and I'm especially proud to work there now during the crisis that we're having because of the mobility that we enable. I think we've got a really great product. So I'm really proud to work for Citrix.

Before that, I want to rewind. What I want to do is. So I did my pre podcast call with Bruce over a month ago before this had really kicked off in any earnest and people were, you know, you know, working from home, was starting to become, oh, it's the new norm. Oh, wow and stuff. But I actually spoke to Bruce and it was still weird then. That was less than, you know, only a month or so ago because you explained how successful it is with you guys and how you did your weekly meeting and you do your other things. Can you. For the listeners. And again, they, some of them go, actually, we're going to need to adopt this talk through that remote working idea because that was going to be a theme of the show now, it seems, oh, we're just jumping on the bandwagon. We're not. Was actually quite, you know, sort of natural, you know, how does it work then with you guys?

Yeah, definitely. You know, it's not easy when you're not around, you know, your people physically all the time. You don't have those informal conversations, you know, in the hallway or in the kitchen. Those times are super valuable. I don't remember. At some point after I started at Citrix again, I set up basically a weekly touch base for our whole team and I've got four people reporting to me underneath me, two people in Fort Lauderdale, one person in Switzerland and one person in Germany. So we're already spread out. I mean, even though those people work in an office, I mean, our whole team is not together. So we had these weekly touch bases on Monday mornings and we started out the meetings very informally where we really, I mean, it was everyone's choice. I mean, they could share what they wanted however much they wanted or however little. But we really asked things like, oh, you know, how was your weekend? What did you do? And the kinds of conversations that you would probably have, you know, in the kitchen when you're getting coffee on Monday morning. And that really helped us, I think, you know, come together as a team. I mean, one of our teammates was on like, sort of fewer hours normally. She wasn't able to join the call and it really felt like she wasn't as much a part of the team when she missed those calls. And then she Started to join the calls and it really improved, I think, the dynamic of the team. So that was one thing that we started and we've kept doing, even though it seems a little bit like, well, what's the business purpose? You're having a call and you're talking about your weekend, like, why are you doing that? But it really does serve a purpose. And now I'm seeing now that everyone is remote, that other people are doing similar things. They're setting up like a coffee break type thing where people get on Zoom and a dozen people on there and just people are talking very informally. Yeah.

And when you say that the, you know, people got on board with that and things like that, in work terms, were you finding that you were discussing, then it sort of, you springboarded into the different projects or was it very structured with that time, or how did it work in treasury terms?

Yeah. So start out the calls, you know, very informally, you know, how's your weekend? What, you know, what are you been doing? Travel, things like that. And then we would just go into things that we felt like that were important for the week. What's going on? You know, what am I hearing from my boss and other leaders? What are the other people on my team hearing? What's coming up in terms of cash or liquidity or FX hedging? Any. Any topic that's. That's relevant. We basically go around to each member of the team and they can talk about something. Maybe they have a question or they know something that's coming up. And it's just a really good time that we get to talk about things that are coming up for the week.

And with you, Bruce, you've got some real passions in some of the stuff you talk about. You're a regular speaker at the Euro finances and talking about the future. Because that's what I wanted to get into with you. That again, you were talking before, we were talking about remote working and that works for you guys, which is really incredible. That was one of the things. But then you've got a number of areas you've got a passion for. Maybe just take a couple of those and explain to the guys listening today where you see treasury going and why. That's a passion of yours.

Okay, sure. I've always had an interest in, I guess, the technology side, treasury doing a little bit of coding here and there. And I see there's definitely been an evolution in Treasury. A lot of times you have someone on your team that's sort of tech focused in the past, maybe with the Excel guru Right. That built all these big models. And I know for myself, I spent a lot of time automating Excel with VBA coding 10 years ago. And then someone introduced me to databases and I realized, well, these databases are doing a lot of the things that I was coding in Excel, so this is a much better solution and building out databases. And then you start to see, you know, some of the limitations there in terms of like being able to pull in lots of different data sources and automate that in a way that's really reliable for somebody who maybe doesn't understand databases. And then that's kind of evolved into newer technologies that help to do this on an automated way or things like we're using Power BI a lot today. And now I've got somebody on my team who has really taken Power BI and built a lot of automated pulling of data sources together and reporting together. So I think there's just been this evolution of technology within treasury where, you know, there's a bit of a diy, you know, do it yourself mixed with external software providers. And the providers always say, oh, you got to move away from Excel. Oh, you got to buy this system. And, and that's great and everything, but I think most people listening to this, even at bigger companies will say, you know, it's, it's always hard to get budget right unless you're doing a big treasury workstation install. It's always hard to get budget because there's always other projects that are maybe are revenue related, that have hard dollars that they're saving or generating. So even if you've got a good roi, it's always hard to get dollars to spend on treasury projects.

And when you say it costs and things like that, have you seen firsthand some of the rewards that is brought through with it? Again, we did talk about this before the call last time and stuff. Where are you seeing that sort of really adding value to you guys?

Where it's adding value to us is on the cash side? I mean, I think that's, that's like the number one topic of a Treasury person, right. Is always cash. Where's the cash? How much do I have? How liquid is it? Where is it in the world from a legal entity perspective, how can I get it to the locations where I need it? And I think the issues that I've seen over the years are, yeah, it's great when you have a Treasury workstation, but then you might not have all of your information in that treasury workstation, or you might have multiple instances around the world. And so you're trying to, you're still, even though you've got that workstation, you're trying to pull together different data sources. You might have all of your cash balances in your workstation, but then if you have investment balances in a system like Clearwater reporting, well, now you've got two different systems, you need to mix those together. The workstation doesn't do it and Clearwater doesn't do it. So you got to do it yourself. And if you can't see that data together, it's kind of meaningless because if you're only looking at cash or you're only looking at investments, you don't have the whole picture. So going through that process and being able to build it out yourselves, you really learn a lot about the data that you have and you learn a lot about your business and the investments and your cash management. So it's been really beneficial for us.

In that you talked there about some of the solutions and the team focus and everything else. How have you built that sort of brought the people along with you? Because you know, if they're quite a distance with away from you again, you and I spoke about this before. How have you brought them on that journey with you? What sort of do you do to sort of get them sort of motivated again? For some of the listeners today, they'll have the same, they'll have some reporting into them from Switzerland or someone reporting same country but a thousand miles away. How do you sort of get them all in the same direction as yourself?

Personally, I do mix of. I mean, I'm remote most of the time, but I do travel to our headquarter office in Fort Lauderdale typically every month for like four to five days. The only time that that stopped is during this coronavirus lockdown. So we're spending time together every month. We get to spend sit side by side and work on things together. And then like I was saying before with the touch bases, we've got like a group touch base. And then I try to have weekly one on one touch bases with my direct reports and then I have occasional like one on ones with, with the other people on the team. But we just try to keep the communication open. And then, I mean in terms of the technology, I mean it's, it's maybe been a little bit by luck, let's say, because you might get some person that naturally tends toward you learning new technologies. But I think going forward, I think it would be more of a strategy like, you know, you might want to have like one person that's good at these kinds of skill sets and another person that maybe, yeah, they know finance, but also have like a technology kind of focus. So I could, I could see that being sort of a strategy going forward.

For anyone that does go to a lot of these conferences. And that's where I've seen you before. Things like Euro finance and various other bits. We've talked about the sort of, the strategy that you start to see there. What are you looking for when you go to those conferences and what would you recommend to other people that they should be thinking about? Is it just literally looking at how treasure can be more strategic or how it can be more added value or all of the above? Or what's the sort of. What's your reason for doing this stuff and pounding the. And doing the air miles, as it were?

Yeah, I think I'd say it's all of the above. I think, you know, you can have a plan going in that you want to learn certain things, but you sometimes you just don't know and you get there and then you learn things that you hadn't planned on learning or you meet people from companies that you didn't know about. And I think the networking is invaluable, right? You meet people from different companies, but they're all treasury people. So some things are different, but a lot of things are the same. You compare notes on systems or the way they're doing certain things, how they run their hedging programs or, or any investments that they do get, things like that, share buyback. So I think, you know, those kind of conversations are invaluable. And then, you know, there are always sessions that, you know about things that, that, you know, maybe you haven't worked on yet. You know, over the years, you know, we've heard about blockchain and, you know, AI and lots of, you know, forecasting techniques. You know, I mean, we've heard the last couple of times we've heard from Microsoft about, you know, them building out some of their own treasury technology. So you sort of never exactly what you're going to get, but you always. I always feel like I get an enormous amount of value going to those conferences.

And when you say that, is there any common path you found yourself? You know, because there are. You're meeting someone and they say, oh, do you know what the key thing for me is? This is my issue, you know, and this. Another one will say, actually, our systems are our issues, or what the common things that you've noticed make trends.

If it's, I think we're Always comparing notes when we network because it's not easy to understand and evaluate all these systems. Right. It's not like you're buying a car and you know, you go and you pull up a bunch of research on different cars and this model or you know that model has these features and these great reviews and you don't have information sources out there, right? I mean, yes, you can hire consultants and they have some research and they can run a process for you and they can help you like learn all the different choices and everything. But that costs money, right? So there's a cost benefit there. It might be worthwhile. But like I said before, it's always hard to get dollars in a Treasury budget. So I think we're always comparing notes because it's hard to know like what's really out there, what are the systems really do, Are people really happy with them? Like what's it really like to work with that system or the other.

Yeah. And people wise, because these are, you know, at the end of the day, the other side of it is the people actually making it work and things like that. What's your ethos around? We've talked about you day to day, wise, sort of mentoring your teams and things. But when you're looking for people yourself and you're looking to maybe recruit, what is it you're trying to find in them? Is it that. Right. They must be technically really strong. I want to see their systems or actually, are they good team players or, you know, what, what are the things that you're trying to, to tease out from them? Something?

I would say sort of all of the above. I'd say for better, for worse. We haven't had to do a lot of recruiting because we have really low turnover at Citrix and especially on the treasury team. But we did have a little, we participated in an internal rotational program so we were able to see some different individuals within the company. And you know, I think treasury, we have super high expectations. Right. I mean, treasury people are always getting stretched and, you know, having to do more with less, you know, we all know that. And so I think you're always looking for someone who understands, you know, how things work from a financial perspective, but are also a good team player. They're curious, you know, they want to work hard. So I mean, you could have like, sort of a great, well rounded person, team player. If you get a little bit more of like the technical skills, I think that's a great bonus. But you know, I think there's a place for a lot of different personalities in a treasury team as well. You don't want only let's say quote unquote, you know, nerdy tech people. I mean you want somebody who's let's say really good working with people and you know, organizing a lot of things. So I think there's room for a lot of different personalities. But I think, you know, you just kind of want to try to fill in and have a very complementary team.

Yeah. One of the video we did recently where it was actually Jean Philippe, a guy from Johnson Controls and we talked about how different members of the team had a sort of complementarity. It was like, and everyone sort of one had strengths here but then weaknesses there and they sort of, each of them slotted in and each of them overlapped sort of thing. Just as we wrap up today's show because I know that Bruce has, you know, hard stop soon people we're going to put in your LinkedIn profile in the show notes, someone's going to look at you and say, do you know what? I love Bruce's background. I'd like to have a similar thing and life wise and things. If someone is looking at that, saying, do you know what? I want to be similar, what advice would you give to them? Would you say, right, come and study in California, do a bit of banking, then do this, do this, you know, or what are the, you know, when you're coaching junior people or things like that, what are the tips for success that you would give to people?

Would you say, well I'd say we're all different, right? Everybody's got to find their path. But I guess I would say don't be afraid of like going off of what you think is the path. Right. I mean I started down the banking path and I realized okay, it's, it's good, you know, like the experience. But you know, maybe this part was not, you know, I wasn't as passionate about like the seller selling side. So maybe corporate treasury is, is more of my path. So I get into corporate treasury and then I was with like a Latin America focused company a little bit small and that was great, good experience but I'd really like to be at more global company. So then I joined Citrix and that was really fun. And, and then I think you're always kind of like trying to find like what works for me or you know, what works for yourself and where are your passions and where can you really add value because people are going to see like the passions that you had. And so what I did in my first Five years at Citrix and the passion that I had is probably the reason why they called me back after four years of being at Walmart and why they were willing to pay for me to fly in every month and do that rather than hire somebody brand new and bring them in, you know, locally and take a chance on somebody new. So I think it's just finding your passions, following them, you know, working hard and that's going to come out in your work and people are going to reward you for that.

Awesome. Find your complimentary passions. There you go. I think that's a nice overlay sort of thing. We finish on time. We. Lots of good stuff there, guys. We'll put Bruce's link to his LinkedIn profile in the show notes so you can have a look at that. And then if it's good. And he will be seeing him when the any of the conferences restart. Really. I think we've had so many of them canceled this first half of the year, but they will be back and we'll be catching up for some drinks, definitely. Maybe Barcelona or maybe in AFP Vegas, who knows? You know, I look forward to seeing you, you know, for the listeners. Any final words? You know, just, just words of advice in this weird world, Bruce.

Everybody just stay safe. You know, we'll watch your cash. We're all, we're all looking at our cash right now and forecasting and stress testing. So everybody just be safe and hopefully, you know, we'll see each other soon at some conferences in person. Person.

And keep your head down. Amazing, Bruce, thanks for your time. Look forward to seeing you soon. Thank you.

All right, thanks a lot, Mike.