Seeing the Bigger Picture in Treasury with Ramon Tolk

Give us the whistle stop tour into the role at Avery Denison.

Well, I've been with Simplecom for about five years indeed. So by the time I said like, okay, this was enough, I've seen so much, I've done so many interesting things, but still now it's time to look ahead and see what other companies are out there with challenging, interesting or trash environment. And then I got in touch with Avery Denison and also Avery Denison is very interesting company. Maybe not so much on the corporate finance side that is quite steady, but more on the treasury operational side where we get to improve a lot of things. So treasury within a few Densen is set up in three regional Treasuries. So we have a Treasury team in the US taking care of the Americas, we have a Treasury team in Hong Kong taking care of Asia Pacific. And my team here in the Netherlands takes care of emea. But besides the responsibility for treasury for Emea, there are also several activities centralized in my team. So we do everything FX related, which initially was only the transaction execution part, but now more the end to end process. We do out of my team. We do all of the intercompany loans within my team, which makes sense because most of those loans flow through Dutch holding companies or through the Dutch treasury entity anyway. And then also the responsibility for the treasury management system is embedded in my team.

Why do you put yourself out there? Why do you think it's important?

I always like it because at one point it's sort of being proud of the things you have done with your team at the company that you want to share with the audience because you think it could be of interest to them. And I think that's really the main thing, sharing knowledge. And that's also what I do. Like if I go to a conference as a visitor, then you want to hear from other treasury folks like what are they busy with, what are they doing, what are developments that you see that other Treasuries are working on? And because it may give you good ideas on what maybe your next project will be on the horizon. And that's why I also like to share my knowledge with the audience. And over time I've done presentations on a variety of topics on Treasury Manager System, on let's say the business intelligence reporting layer that we had developed around that in my previous company on FX Risk Management. So that was for instance on Group Treasures Exchange, I was leading a roundtable discussion on the balance sheet hatching that we do what I believe what always is important is that you keep, let's say a broad scope. I've seen in the past Treasuries that really operate sort of from ivory tower. And that's not what should be doing. As treasury, go out to your business partners, get to understand what keeps them awake at night and try to think like, okay, what can we do to deal with that to help him out? And so you really have to have a proactive mindset. And I would say another important element is that you continuously have to look for ways to improve. Whether it's your own work, the systems you operate with, the way maybe the team is structured, there's always elements that you can improve and that's what you should be looking for. I believe for me, if I look back at myself, that has helped me throughout my career hugely because already as an, as an auditor was still being studying for, for to become chartered accountant, I was taking on everything that I learned during the studies and right at that point in time already see how I can, let's say, incorporate that knowledge into the work I'm doing. And also later in the year when I was in treasury, all the knowledge you obtained through conferences and so on, through literature, through your studies, directly try to translate it in how can I use this knowledge to improve my work, the team I'm working in, I think that's very helpful.