Mark Hirst discusses treasury management systems and why flexibility matters in finance teams. He shares skepticism about TMS capabilities and lessons from his time at William Hill and Dr. Martens about adapting to change and learning on the job.
It was completely manual, everything was on a spreadsheet. And the thing I didn't want to be rushed into in my initial weeks and months at William Hill was going out and getting the tms. And as you said, you get bombarded with emails and calls and invitations to speak about various TMS systems. I tend to be fairly cynical about TMS and the benefits in terms of what you get for what you pay. But I won't go into that. It's not the time or place. The key thing here is don't be rushed. Have a look at your environment and examine your environment very closely. It's for sure it's on the roadmap. But actually I'd question these days, given all of the available technology, whether a TMS will do absolutely everything for you that you need it to. And certainly some are more flexible than others and some are modular and some are in the cloud, et cetera. Right. So often what you don't want is bending the business or the way that treasury operates to the way that TMS operates. It's a tail wagging the dog. You want it the other way around? Absolutely. And I'm always, as I said, slightly skeptical. I don't think we've cracked TMS yet across the profession in terms of this is what we pay for a system and this is what we end up getting, and can it do this, can it do that? For example, cash flow forecasting in many TMS is pretty rudimentary. It's not always fantastic. But then there are some really good tools now on the market where they specialize in cash liquidity planning. It's part of your technology picture or stack within Treasury. All these to be considered in the round. As long as you get to a place where you're integrated, then you're going to be in a good place. But to say it's one size fits all where the TMS is probably not the right thing to say these days. It's retained that edgy feel to it. And it's also incredibly diverse as a company, especially compared to my last company. It is so diverse. I'm amazed at the diversity at Dr. Martin's. And again, it's a bit like the way I recruit teams. You know, I like people from different backgrounds with different ideas. Dr. Martin's feels the same about the way it recruits people. Different backgrounds, different diverse people bring different ideas. I think the watchword is flexibility and I think nobody's rushing back full time anytime soon. I saw an acronym, an interesting acronym, the other day, actually, for people who only come in either Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. And it looks a bit like a swear word. But I guess what you don't want to get to is a place where people feel compelled to come into the office. Here at Dr. Martin's, Tuesday is our team day, so it means that everybody's in the office on a Tuesday. And that at the moment is all I expect of the team. And it's a small team, but whereas I'm trying to do two to three days in the office in Camden and a couple of days at home where I can without distraction. Easier said than done when you've got two young kids. But I think that that is very much the word. It's flexibility. I think it's treating the issue sympathetically and empathetically. And Dr. Martens, I think, is no different to William Hill in that respect. Clearly William Hill, for me, still very much recent memory. And again, exactly the same approach there. Yeah, look, I mean, whether that changes again in 12 months time, who knows? It depends, I guess, on a factors, not least the development of COVID itself. But I'm quite happy. I think people have demonstrated they can do their job basically from the home or a hybrid. Certainly works for me. I'm not a micromanager, so there's no way I'd want to be speaking looking over people's shoulders anyway. 24 7. So it works as a summary.
