The Importance of Technology in Treasury with Séverine Le Blévennec

It's very important to have a strategy and a vision where you think you can go, what you can achieve, what are the pain points of the team, how you can help if you have a good dialogue with them, you understand what they spend their time on, what are the frustration points, etc. So that you know where to improve, where, where you should focus your attention on. And then okay, you can, as you say, you can just rely on external providers. But I think to me it's important to have a very pragmatic. The vision is the first step. But then being pragmatic and being able to dive into whatever details needed, I think makes it something that is really useful. I would definitely not call me a geek or a very techie person by nature. So when I design a process, I design it thinking, okay, my grandmother should be able to understand how it works, right? And not my team as my grandmother. But so it means that it should be something extremely user friendly and light for the user. And you put all the complexity in the programming, in the design of the process, you put all the complexity behind so that afterwards for the user it's so clear cut, so simple that he wonders why it was not done before technology. It will remain a way to be able to assess and manage all the things we need to manage and be as a more strategic partner for the whole finance function and the business and not just transaction based Treasury. I think what is also very important is to become really a catalyst and build bridges between the pure treasury function and the other parts of finance organization. Often for instance, we are the entry point for fintechs to approach us and many times some products are not really touching, sometimes none of the points that we do in treasury, but they are finance products and we can see the value. So it's important that we take this energy because it's not easy in big organization to try and find who are really the people that we can bring together and present to them and have them unlock the value that can be in those products, which can be often disruptive for their KPIs, which can be disruptive in terms of technology, which can be. But where the bottom line, they can be huge benefit for the corporation. And I think for me the new function of a treasurer is of course run the house properly, make sure processes are state of the art, make sure people develop properly, that we deliver on any activ. Etc. But also be really the partner for the whole of the finance function and sometimes for things they don't know that they need, right? It's really have them break the silos. Break the silos. Within the finance function. Another thing that for me personally is probably not so typical in the market, I would say don't let your ego drive your life and your career. Often people have an idea, I want to be a manager, I want to be a director. But a director in one company may be a manager in another one and a manager in one company, maybe a VP in another. So really look what is behind the job. Will you learn? Will you be able to add the value? Will you have something interesting? Touching. Very different touching point. Does the whole job make sense for you, for your family? Will you be happy doing that job? If you're not happy, you cannot perform well. I don't believe in thinking, oh, I'm going to take this position for two, three years, I will hate it. But it's good for my career. It cannot be good for your career if you hate it. I think you need really to ask questions and assess the the whole package. What is the quality of the team? How is the reporting line? How is the corporate culture? So I think that's really important. And forget about your ego. Maybe you will have a better evolution by doing something that which on paper does not look as sexy, but behind there is really meat to it.