Treasury professionals explain what draws them to the field. They highlight cash management, problem-solving across the company, and the networking opportunities that come with connecting internal teams and external partners.
Treasury is in my eyes, one of the functions where you really have great insight of a company. So the flexibility. You could choose. Actually everything materializes in cash. So whether you generate cash or you spend cash as a Treasury, you can be involved in everything, in all the processes if you want to. So that made me think a lot of times, should I stay in treasury or not? And well, I was in a couple of companies and treasury is in each company different.
I like the way that you kind of, I know people say like you're in the middle of everything, but it's sort of, I think getting more important. The Treasury Department. So not every company has a lot of dedicated Treasury Department. I think it's becoming more kind of relevant now you're in the middle of everything. Any new business deal, you're there as like a specialist advisor in terms of any commercial deals that are happening. You know, you make sure everything. You could be involved in a high profile M and A. So making sure that payroll is happening and lots of projects that are happening. Quite exciting. Not exciting as well. Brexit things and technology, it just seems to be central to everything at the moment. That's why I enjoy it. No days, the same kind of thing.
What I find, I love about it is the fact that you're interacting with the outside world so much so it's with the banks and it's with other treasurers. It's the networking and it's being outward facing. It's the fact that you're actually adding value to the future of the company. It's not backwards looking, it's forwards looking. So you're a value add. But I think there's also a drawback on that because you're also, you're so concentrating on the out, the outward, the forward and the outside world, the banking relationships and the networking and the ACT and the other events and things you go to that you forget. You can easily forget to network inside because actually your work doesn't really have an awful lot of connection inside like an accountant's does or the legal team might have. And you're often forgotten about in treasury when they're talking about strategy or talking about implications of the business direction. Treasury is not brought to the table as much as it should be. And so you actually have to make an effort to be more inward and connect yourself to the inside of the organization.
I've enjoyed so many things, I can't really answer that. It's always been fantastic fun. I never look back. I mean for me the big thing, especially working in a large corporation is that in the first few years when I was doing accounting and budgeting and that kind of stuff, I never talked to anybody outside the company. In treasury you're talking to lots of people outside the company all the time and you get a reality check on a regular basis. People look at the business in a very critical way and your job is to actually handle that and it's much closer to reality. And then you get all the challenges of dealing in the markets and so on. I mean there's just so many positives and actually as with most things, the real positive is the people.
I enjoy problem solving, I think, well, treasury is like the heart I think of as an organization, right? So money casterizes all the business around. Usually they come to us when there's a problem and we are the people that are going to be usually providing the solution to difficult problems. So it's like puzzles, puzzle solving. You have a lot of different things and cash and liquidity in different areas, financing and you try to match and find the best solution for every issue there lots of different things.
I have been in treasury with three different companies and I think what's exciting about treasury is that you're in an interface between the financial markets and the company. Every company is different. I've worked in three different sectors. So the treasury issues or the treasury problems that you deal with are different. So it's really the diversity of the role and also the ability to apply it in different companies in different industries. I think the skill set is transferable and I've also spent time outside treasury in other corporate finance roles such as investor relations MA and commodities, risk management and pensions. So I think it's a great role to apply also in related functions. And the skill set that you acquire I think is transferable.
Well, I think that it will always be challenging because when you're a Treasury manager head of treasury function, you always have the issue that the CFO and the directors always come to you when something is wrong. They never come to you and give you applause when you do your job. They only come to you when money is missing or you have a financial exposure that you didn't know of.
There's a problem I think in most of the organizations I've worked in, I've worked in quite large complex corporates. So I've done power telecoms most recently RAO and it has been a good balance between, particularly at recent role at network rao, a good balance between core treasury day to day cash liquidity management as well as corporate finance and a lot of debt issuance and financial risk management. It's the variety. No one day is the same.
