Treasury Career Corner Live in London

Foreign. Good morning. All right. No, we're doing that again.

All right.

I've seen a couple of people asleep at the back. I'm watching you in particular. Can we do that again, please? Good morning. Right, we're awake. Thank you very much. Yeah, quite interesting, actually. Co founder. It was a bit weird because I think I am actually just the founder, perhaps my wife just tells me otherwise.

You're the founder?

Yeah, exactly. A bit weird. That's news to me. I don't know. My name is Mike, Mike Richards. And as we just. Thank you very much for the intro. I run the treasury recruitment company. We're a specialist treasury recruiters and I've been doing it for the past 22 years. Hopefully know quite a lot of faces around in the room and we've got offices both here in the UK and in the us. We recruit at all levels, from treasury analyst to group treasurer. As I say, on a global scale. And that's just a position why I'm actually up here with three very talented treasurers. I'll get them to introduce themselves in a moment. So the reason I'm actually up here and doing this live version, if you like, of the. I run a Treasury podcast, started it last October. Pleased to say a lot of you guys listen to it and enjoy it. We've just gone over 10,000 downloads in nine months. So you're all finding the treasury stories that these guys have got to say, and some of the people in this room, actually, I see a couple of guests very interesting, but every week I talk to treasurers about how they started their careers, what where they are now, and where they see both themselves and the treasury profession going to next. Now, this is a live version, as I say, and it's a little bit different. We discussed this before, because a lot of the live version shows that we do are in front of groups of more junior treasury professionals. We did one in London earlier this year, did one in Luxembourg, and these guys are wanting your jobs, so you do have to watch your back sometimes. But in all seriousness, they're wanting to learn how to achieve where they should study, qualifications, what else should they do, project management, all the other things. So they're desperate to learn. Now, it's a bit different, as I say, because we're in front of a group of their peers. So actually, what we're going to do today is perhaps share some of their experiences, some of their ideas around treasury management, talent management in particular, and coaching, rather than trying to teach you guys how to get to be treasurers. Because most of you already are now. I recently spoke in Chicago at the Windy City Summit and I kicked off the session by going a bit mad, not just wearing a tablecloth for a shirt, actually decided to say to the guys in the room, everybody in the room, and you guys are exactly the same. You all do the same job in the same way, with the same tools, with the same teams, facing exactly the same issues and the same problems. And they all gave me that same look. Has he gone mad? Not quite yet. But actually the point I was trying to make is that all of you guys do amazing jobs. You will follow different ways of doing it, use similar tools, different systems and everything else. So I wanted to explore with some of the guys up here the ways that they approach problems and how they deal with things, how they run their teams. They've all got different things, different industries and everything else. So, and I'm pleased to say I've known these gents for many years, they bought me the odd beer, but not many, not enough, should I say. As I said on the podcast every week, that's enough from me. Let's hear from some of these guys, perhaps introduce yourself and then maybe how you will do a quick intro and then we'll talk about how you first got started in treasury and go through some of those. So, Jason.

Yep. So Jason Spanos, I'm the Director treasury at Cocoa European Partners.

Matt Norris, I'm the assistant Group Treasurer at petrafac.

My name is Topi Jokieranta and I look after the treasury at Reti Group, which is a Finnish family owned investment company.

Perfect. Jason, perhaps for the audience, you first got started in treasury on the darker side in banking. It's all right, you get over, but perhaps explain how you started in treasury that side and then came through.

I always knew I'd kind of go into treasury so I studied investment and financial risk management at the Cass Business School. You know, what was very clear was how much I enjoyed kind of, you know, fixed income and risk management. And I was trying to identify, you know, as the kind of overzealous, you know, 18, 19 year old that I was at the time, what job would enable me to touch on all areas of finance. So very early on I knew treasury was that function. So I ended up working at a very small bank, bank of Cyprus, in their treasury department. And that was before I then kind of progressed onto, onto my mba. And my MBA was split between Paris and the uk, but I had a three month window in between. And during that time I had the opportunity to take on a contract in, funnily enough, Coca Cola. But Coca Cola France at the time, not in treasury, it was, it was actually their marketing finance department for the, for the, for the Powerade brand. But for me it was in part, okay, well, I'm living and working in Paris. I want to see if I, if, you know, my French extends to kind of business French. But in turn, what is it like working for a corporate. And I, I think 99% of the people that studied my degree went into banking. And the Coca Cola opportunity showed me that actually I like working for an organization that has a tangible product. And my background is, I'll get to in a moment is very much fmcg, so very much that tangible product. So when I returned from Paris, I'd taken the decision not to go into banking and actually continue down that corporate route, but more aligned to my ambition of working in Treasury. And that's where Cadbury's came about and very much kind of where three of us have common history.

So just to explain to everyone in the audience, all three of these chaps previously worked at Cadbury's and that's where they all came together. And that was the other bit that came together and then actually have gone different paths from there which we're going to explore. So Matt, explain maybe your background, how you got to Cadbury's and then we'll go from there for each of you.

Well, I did not know that I was going to be in Treasury. I fall firmly into the category of I fell into Treasury. I was working with Citibank in Australia and to join the graduate program. I had a sponsor ready to bring me into that program. Just as they brought a bit of transformation in the local Citibank, I lost my sponsor. And that's when I looked around and was basically told, well, why don't you try Treasury? There's a few roles going. I was introduced to Conor Maher, who Mike and I know quite well and I was told it's basically like banking but within a corporate. So I joined hewlett Packard in 2003 and as a Treasury analyst. I was there for about three years with an introduction to treasury around cash management. But a lot of what we were doing was heavily automated, as you can imagine in a company like hp. After about three years and realizing that we were looking at doing a lot of value add projects and trying to look around for things to do because the job had become quite a lot of press buttons and finish a day job early. Halfway through the morning I had an opportunity to move across to Cadbury where they were not quite in the same state. Cadbury at that point was moving into a complete transformation of their treasury setup from older partners. Still a lot of manual payments, a lot of checks, for example. And that's where came in to join Topi and Jason to help transform that Treasury Center.

Topi every day.

How did I end up in Treasury? I actually studied in Amsterdam as part of the. Part of the studies there was a compulsory internship or a work placement, any which way you want to call it. I actually did it at Hewlett Packard in Amsterdam, but I actually wanted to stay there. Probably something to do with banking, perhaps. There was actually a potential spot, options trading and stuff like that. And then through this Hewlett Packard route there was an offer that you could just move to UK and join the European treasury center, which is where I started. And I just left before Matt joined, so he's been following me around. But what I did study was finance, corporate finance major. So, you know, I wanted something to do with that. And I wasn't really sure if I want to work for a bank. And so I sort of halfway landed also in treasury and good, because, you know, obviously Hewlett Packard was one of those great platforms where they were very eager to take in graduates and teach people, young people, how things work. It was pretty, sort of fairly big team, I suppose, you know, for what they did. Good systems, good thinking. And so after that, my AMCT studies there and then off to Regis for a while, which had just gone public. Very turbulent times. And then after that, well, through a few more corners, ended up also at Cadbury.

What was Cadbury like when you arrived and because you were the first one.

There, or I think Jason must have been there just. Yeah, before. Before myself. It felt like. Like they had got stuck with their processes, with their systems, the whole thinking about, you know, where is this whole function going. Also what they had at the time was a regional setup with very strong regional management. So it felt a bit more decentralized, I suppose there were a lot of questions, well, are we in control of what's happening? Do we know what's happening everywhere? And so really what it was all about is, well, let's look at the systems that look at the processes, risk management, everything around it, which of course needed good talent, new people. And then that's where the transformation started.

Matt, what part did you play within that? You said, you know, you'd arrived at Cadbury's and Jason perhaps describe to the audience how well evolution was going on at Cadbury's over six years. Was it six years you were there?

Six and a half years. I mean in terms of, and Toppy just alluded to it in terms of, you know, what I arrived into. I didn't know any different to the, I didn't know what a good world class treasury could, could look like. I mean I came into a dealing role, but it was dealing, it was cash management and bizarrely. And this is kind of where there's complete control failure. The dealers were also executing the payments. You know, this, is this perhaps going to, you know, get going into a little bit too much detail. But you know, say, say we can download something from SAP and we noticed the account details were incorrect. We would go into the file, modify it, make the payment because obviously we had our, we had our cutoffs go back into the system, correct it and then everything would reconcile. But complete control failure and that kind of, you know, flag that change needed to happen. And that change came about by a new group treasurer coming in ex Coca Cola Hellenic chap by the name of John Fulton. And John was a very ambitious guy. You know, he, he, he knew kind of what, what world class, what world class looked like. And that's where Toppy came in from Diageo. That had been I suppose kind of on the, on that journey for, for a number of years.

Yes, they'd done a lot of that stuff before and you know, that was definitely one of the top, not Treasuries. It was a huge treasury with lots and lots of resource and I keep using this phrase but you know, you know what good looks like. And so it was kind of easy coming into February and then look at it. Well, okay, this looks very different. Including for example, you sitting in a glass box doing FX deals probably, which was a bit odd. So you know, starting from basics. So yeah, Diageo helped.

Cozy glass box.

Yeah.

But nevertheless the walls did come down very much became open plan develop with Topi a risk function. Matt came into the dealing room and that was essentially the spark that then led on to really kind of driving that change in the risk framework. Something which was an absolute necessity. And it was almost about kind of getting the basics right and putting the right system in place in order to facilitate that ambition before then looking at, okay, well we've resolved the central function. Next step is to develop the regional function and kind of centralize more.

So you guys are now in three leadership roles as such. So what did John put in place at that time that you were aspiring to? What was it that was. Did he say, right, this is how treasury is going to look and come in with a big stick, or what was the process?

I think the two biggest things were the system. We need a decent system. So that was one of the things that he pushed through very fast. And second thing was probably just, well, let's look at the whole competence and the whole framework. What are we really, why are we here? What's the purpose? And the third, as Jason just mentioned, the third was, well, we need some control. It's a huge company, global company, probably almost present in every single country in the world. We need the regional Treasuries in place so that we can start dealing with information flow, we can start looking at the local setups. So those three were probably the biggest things. They did happen pretty fast. They were put in place very fast, which obviously created its own anxiety around the whole setup. But then I think it set the pace and we continued with the pace.

I came in in 2003. I didn't actually meet John, didn't know him. Sarah Boyce was the treasurer at the time, but when I joined, it was very, very clear that the previous treasurer, John, had been a catalyst for change. And when I joined, what was very, very clear was I was joining a team of very, very energized, very skilled people, all quite ambitious as well, and all collaborative. And it was, you know, during. During the session of putting, and we were in weekends, for example, coming in to try and help support each other and get the things out of the line. And it was a really great team environment because we just wanted to deliver it.

A lot of the time on the podcast, I talk to people about qualifications and the need to do it. The first podcast guests I did was Sarah Jane hall from GlaxoSmithKline. Her closing remarks were study, study, study. Just get as many as you can. If you get an opportunity to study in amct, mba, mct, whatever it is, people can't take it away from you. Now, virtually, I think you've all got amct, you've got the MBA equivalent, you've got similar as well, Toppi, and you've got all certain levels of professional qualification. Is that something you insist on maybe with your teams now, or, you know, what's your defining?

From our side, I've got the amct, and within our team, we do require that to be something that they do, and mainly because it's a great foundation of treasury practices, best practices, of just the fundamental understanding of why we're doing.

What we're doing and how many are in the team? Just perhaps explain the treasury setup.

We've got about 10 people in our team, from the group treasurer down, our treasury split between, roughly evenly between charger in the UAE and in the uk. Of that, we've got four now fully qualified in the mct. Two of them are starting to work towards it. What we have found, though, is we don't push later qualifications. What we do want is we do agree with the idea of study, study, study. But whether that's branching out and doing an accounting qualification, whether it's doing a level one cfa, whether it's an mba, that's very much down to the individuals.

But it is supported.

And part of the reason for that is we don't want, for example, to send every single person down the same educational route, because then you're going to have everyone just thinking exactly the same way. And we need people in our team to kind of challenge each other and whatnot. So it's great to have a fundamental understanding. I'll always support that. But I think people should then be encouraged to find what interests them, what they're skilled at, and try and build on that as well.

And top of your. Based in Finland, AMCT is not quite.

So.

It's not just an act fest, I would say this is just something that is a really good qualification. But you've got two junior guys, you've explained that to them as well and they've come on board.

Yes, they've started studying amct, and it's rare in Finland, unfortunately, there isn't anything equivalent to that. It tends to be, you know, university finance degrees and. Or a lot of engineering degrees that you see flying around. Mathematics, you know, the traditional way, obviously, then the polytechnics, you know, help. But amct, yes. And it's, you know, it's one of these things where getting the technical skills and getting certified for actually being able to pass those exams is one thing. So, yes, you need those. It doesn't have to be amct, but obviously that's purpose built for this particular part of finance. And so. And it's because it's rare in Finland, I thought, well, why not? Let's put these guys through. And they. They want to be. They want a career in treasury core, treasury people. So that kind of makes sense. It fits. They have, you know, they've got uniforms, university degrees, both of them, and. And so they are already highly qualified, if you know what I mean. Essential. Not necessarily depends, you know, but experience needs to be combined with the technical skills that you get from studying I think and, and we are a team of five, which means three people and two systems. So really, you know, it's a small team. You do need to pay attention quite a bit. You know, everything works, the competence side of things, technical skills as well as, you know, everything else. The softer people side.

Jason?

Yeah, I mean the only thing I would add to that is I think the foundation needs to be there. A term that you know, are a cool top used in categories. You know, we have different career avenues. So just because someone's in treasury today doesn't mean they want, they want a career in Treasury. So I think AMCT is absolutely kind of, you know, the basic that you need if you want a career in treasury, if you don't want a career in treasury, but you want a career in general finance and you're seeing treasury as a stepping stone. I think a management accounting qualification like SEMA is key and it's key in particular as you can progress through your career and want to understand how kind of all the moving parts in the business come together. So it's about foundation, I think mct, I don't have it, I won't do it. I think I've kind of reached a certain stage in my career where I can be strategic. If early on you understand the more strategic elements of treasury, then the MCT helps. But it's a commitment. Its commitment, particularly how the format has changed in the last few years from being three kind of case study based exam to more of an MBA style intensive kind of 15 month with a paper at the end of it. So particularly people with families, that's a commitment that they need to consider.

So the takeover came over by Craft in 2010. That's right, Matt, you decided to escape this lovely beautiful weather we had and ran away to the Middle east or maybe perhaps tour through for again the audience. What then happened to the three of you to go different ways and different blue chips? What did you have behind you? If you like, on my side.

So having gone from Hewlett Packard and kind of seen a lot of automation but not knowing how to get there and how to actually build that, then went to Cadbury where it was actually transitioning and building a roadmap which I think we would call journey to world class, if I remember correctly. And I've always likened it to the idea of building like a kit car, for example, in your garage and you're building this thing that's absolutely beautiful and you're ready to drive it and then Craft comes in and takes your keys.

From you.

We just finished the implementation as it all happened. So crop, yes, that was a capitalist and I had an opportunity to go and join Petrovac in the uae did not have a Senate central treasury function. It was just a group treasurer who had agreement to build a central treasury function, pull all the efficiencies from FX management across the different business units that were there, all the cash together. When we joined There was about 700 bank accounts across about 70 odd banks and very little visibility. It's all very much the fundamental treasury actions you'd expect to see in a corporate that doesn't have the function. We just built that up over a four year period, bringing in team members, putting in a TMS. Eventually in around 2014 I became the assistant group treasurer and the role became a lot more about partnering the business and actually helping find ways to bring down cash. You can further with them, help with the FX kind of bid process for our projects. It was a transition from kind of migration all or transitioning one treasury function to another ad race to building it completely with the treasurer Petrovac. And what we're finding right now is we're kind of in that same period with the move to digitalization, with the technology changes. It's very much the same, the same challenges now but with a lot better technology. And so we're right now looking at not just the treasury operations but the whole of finance altogether. Which is one of the reasons I was talking yesterday about because now technology is there to actually really embed treasury even more in the business as well.

And Toby, before we run out of time, because I want to perhaps give us a quick run through of what. Where did you go from there? Springboard?

Yes, well, I actually joined Tesco. I just come back from Singapore and it didn't take very long, you know, until this whole takeover happened. And then I joined Tesco for a while and then really it was, you know, after that it was two kids having been here for a while, then it was time to go back to Finland. So I worked on a long two year project for a private equity owned healthcare technology company which is a massive European Middle east or EMEA area cash management regional treasury creation project. And after that I joined Rettig and so it was moving back to Finland and actually starting my first job for a Finnish company after graduation. So you know, it was a very different environment, much, much smaller country. The whole treasury scene is much more, you know, smaller. There are big companies but there are far and few and so very different environments. And now of course this Company is fully family owned. That's something I hadn't done before. And so as it sort of adds a different flavor to it.

Jason When I left Cadbury's I went to, well, briefly, briefly at Diageo, but potentially when it went over to British American Tobacco initially for a two year period I was doing kind of funding and risk role. So very much kind of, you know, capital markets and rates. And then an opportunity came up to head up the West European treasury function. So BAT operates in 182 countries globally. So I had 42 of those markets. But the timing worked very well because in the end I didn't just have West Europe, but I was also the global treasurer for their non combustible side of the business, which was quite interesting because it was their first conventure into, into E cigarettes, heat not burn and at the time a pharmaceutical grade product. I left BAT briefly to Delarue, more out of personal interest than anything else to see. Okay, well, I've worked in the 5020 space my entire career. What's it like working in a smaller organization? It was very interesting, but it kind of lacked the complexity and the speed of execution that I saw kind of in the early part of my career. And at the start of this year I joined Coca Cola as a trader director.

Just we spoke before the session because obviously this is more a group of your peers as such. And we talked about coaching, mentoring your teams and advice about how you successfully run your teams, maybe starting with yourself. Toppy, you explained about how, you know, what advice would you give to say some of the people here who are maybe new to management or they've got challenging teams or different things. What have you found successful when you're coaching and managing your guys?

Well, first of all, you have to, if you have a team, you have to invest the time. It's not just something that you do whenever you happen to have time and then postpone is something you have to allocate an X amount X percent of your time. It's important because you're not going to be able to do all by yourself. You've hired a team and you have to trust your team that they are professionals and they're going to deliver for you so they can care of them. That's one thing you need to probably ask your HR people if you have such, you know, departments to give you some tools, if not develop them yourselves to have decent discussions and conversations because, well, you spend eight hours a day, five days a week with these people. You know, it's a lot of time. And so it makes sense to learn a little bit more on what's going on there. And then, you know, you can, can sort of go through all the ups and downs. Another one that I had to learn was to stop micromanaging and delegate and then trust that things get done. Otherwise, you know, you just kind of kill yourself with the workload. And it doesn't mean that, you know, things don't necessarily get done any better at all. And so one of the things is that, well, if you think you've hired the right people, you've got the right team, then let them people their job, focus on other things, look forward, don't look back, throw them challenges because, you know, and involve your team into the wider picture because they also want to know what they're doing, where does the information go to these decisions, what's the impact? And so it's almost a responsibility to make sure that, you know, they get involved and they get given challenges because that's how they grow and that's how, how they get different kind of exposure to many things. And that also tends to prolong the life of your team because, you know, if they get chances inside the company, they don't necessarily have to think about switching jobs.

I agree with all of that, but I do think it starts with having the right, the right people and, you know, in the day and age now, where frankly, the automation within the role and the, the transactional element of treasury becomes far more automated people's time and the capacity gets increased that they have free when the successful automation comes in. And you need to have a team of people that will use that time proactively, actually come up with ideas. So we, for example, was it last September we launched a Treasury strategy day. We had our team come in, we said, right, what are the pain points points? What do we want to fix? We gave ourselves a roadmap for the year and we'll rerun it again in September, see where we are and take stock. But we've got a team who will roll up their sleeves, want to fix these issues, because fundamentally they know that their jobs, their lives become so much better with this automation. I was saying earlier, it used to be a case, you often have like a team that could have a workhorse in there that was very, very good at their job and they would just sit and do it. That would be okay because you could just have them there. But as some of the elements of those tasks now become automated, you need that time to be used most effectively.

I think ultimately it's down to empowerment. Make sure your team feel empowered. They have the opportunity. You create that opportunity, you create that opportunity for development. You create that opportunity for them to present to some of the more senior stakeholders, get them the visibility that they actually hunger for. And to Toppy's point, invest your time and it's not giving feedback at the half year and the full year. It's about giving feedback on a, on a consistent basis. You know, you, you have a meeting, it was perhaps, you know, not, not the best delivery in that meeting. You know, have that quiet conversation and, and see, you know, perhaps what, what could be done a little bit differently.

I certainly agree the empowerment and in our case autonomy is also a really, really powerful tool. But you also need an individual in your team that will actually embrace that and actually take it on.

So we don't. So we do run to time and everything else because I don't want him to come and slap me around the chops and he's likely to do so. I can see that he's got that look about his face. These gents are going to just give you a couple of their tips for career success. At the end we're going to open the floor to ask, get any Q and A from you guys, just briefly and then we'll come back to these gents just to explain what they would say have been, you know, there are three guys that came all the way through to Cadbury's and then gone to different blue chips and everything else and what your personal ethos are about, where you're going to and stuff that like, like that with Treasury. But it's over to you guys. Come on, get your own back. Want to see some hands? What questions do you have? Yes please, Marcus.

So what skills in your treasury teams.

Do you feel that you're missing?

Particularly non core treasury skills and how do you see getting those skills into the team?

I would advocate that anyone that wants a long term treasury career within an organization actually kind of identify opportunities to move out of Treasury. It's quite easy for us to be silos, considered specialists and often described as not commercial. And I think kind of in larger treasury team bot being an example where you sat on the regional flt and had the opportunity to sit with your peers for three days every quarter and talk about the commercial aspects and not just Treasury. I mean my contribution to the discussion was 90% commercial and 10% treasury. So I had that exposure and my team had that exposure because I'd occasionally can bring them along but in a smaller team where you're very much kind of sitting in that ivory tower. You need to identify ways to go into the business, either project based or seconded for a short period of time. Just have that time. Understand the bread and butter of the business, what makes it tick because it makes you a better treasurer, it makes you a better, better finance professional.

What we're missing right now is actually the system skill kind of data scientists, if you will, to actually help us with our digitalization program. My worry on the skill front though is actually once we've done that and we've actually got ourselves a very automated solution, it's maintaining the skill that we currently have. We have a lot of subject matter experts in various components of our treasury skill set. But as those operational processes become pushed back and processes or even just exception reports, maintaining that skill set of understanding why that process is doing what it's doing is the bit that I think will be a challenge.

I mean is anything missing? I think, I think that's relative to what is the need. Probably out of core skills, perhaps trade finance, but we don't really have a much, a big need for it. You could always use a bit more accounting and knowledge, you know, how this whole thing ties up to the group financial accounts and how they get put together. But then how much can you do with a team of three really? So I don't think anything's necessarily missing. It's the question of either the depth of what you know or the actual need in that particular organization. Obviously one thing is, well it's we manage two systems which we sort of force out to the people in the whole organization. So we have to understand the configuration and the management of those. But you know, it wouldn't hurt to have, you know, extra resource for working some more financial analysis. Complex, complex stuff. Maybe, you know, a bit more on RPA programming side of things. But then you know, it's, it's one thing wanting things, whether you get the resource, whether you can actually argue for it and have a case for it, then that's another. So nothing's really majorly missing. But I'd like to have obviously deeper understanding and more resource to get other things done.

Time for one more question.

Hi, good morning. I was wondering, because you all have different companies with different things, I was wondering if all of you have a payment platform, yes or no?

The payment factory.

Yeah, factory payment. One single payment platform where you run all your payments all around the world.

Yes. Well if I take that first. Yes. 90% there and then you've got countries that you can't really hook up which naturally fall out, but every single country that you can hook up to it. Yes, we've got full in house bank receipts and payments on behalf centrally administered, liquidity wise as well.

Yes, we've got a quasi in house bank has kind of been pieced together and actually I've been bugging Toppy all conference to getting his thoughts on moving to a full payment factory for us. So we haven't got it yet, but.

That'S what we're currently building at Coca Cola. We don't have an in house in house bank yet. It is the ambition is about, you know, we're in that very much in that journey of, you know, thinking about new systems, you know, and looking at processes. But you know, there's quite a mature shared service center based in Sofia and the archive source to pay function very much kind of deals with that. It's just a little bit more manual than we'd like.

And for you too, is it included in your TMS or not?

No, we have a more modular way of thinking things. TMS does only what the TMS is good for and it's not really, it's not good for payments. So it's a system called Opus Capita which is the in house tank engine that handles the payment flows that come out of ERPs or directly into that system. So no, it's not the TMS now, although you could do it. Yeah.

So any of you were able to get rid of manual things like Forecast, for example. Are you doing your forecast with spreadsheet and Nexil and so on?

Well, tell you what, just so that he doesn't get angry, maybe the guys can answer the question outside. Yeah, they will be free for questions afterwards because look at him. That's not happening. It's not a happy man. Yeah, I know, I can see that. So thank you to all of these guys. It will be free for, you know, Q and A outside as well maybe to follow up there. But so we finished just the personal career tips. Just any one or two things that you, you know, spring to mind about what to do.

You know, don't hide behind your screens, don't hide it behind your respective functions. Make sure you're embedded in the business, in the processes. Understand what other people do, engage. All too often we say within our specialisms and we don't engage. And it's important to do so understand.

What treasury does, understand your instance.

So it's a system called Opus Capita, which is the in house bank engine that handles the, the payment flows that come out of ERPs or directly into that system. So, no, it's not the TMS now, although you could do it. Yeah.

So any of you were able to get rid of manual things like forecast, for example. Are you doing your forecast with spreadsheet and Excel and so on?

Well, tell you what, just so that he doesn't get angry, maybe the guys can answer the question outside. Yeah, they will be free for questions afterwards because look at him. That's not happening. It's not a happy man. Yeah, I know, I can see that. So thank you to all of these guys. It will be free for, you know, Q and A outside as well, maybe to follow up there. So we finished. Just the personal career tips. Just any one or two things that, you know, spring to mind about what to do.

You know, don't hide behind your screens, don't hide it behind your respective functions. Make sure you're embedded in the business, in the processes. Understand what other people do, engage. All too often we say within our specialisms and we don't engage. And it's important to do so.

Understand what treasury does. Understand your own skill set. Everyone has different skill sets. You don't have to know all the answers, but if you do build the relationships both externally and also internally, by making sure you're speaking to everyone in the business, you get a much better picture of who you can lean on for help and who you can actually support with your skills.

Well, on top of those things, what I'm going to throw in, don't get stuck. Do a role or spend enough time learning a part of treasury or wider finance and then move on to the next piece. So collect the pieces and then at the end, you're going to have the whole puzzle done and then your skill set is going to be pretty wide and impressive. So don't get stuck. I suppose I adapt to those comments.

Please put your hands together. Thank you very much, panel.