Unification in Corporate Treasury Management: Consolidating Systems for Enhanced Control

As businesses grow and scale, their treasury and financial ecosystems become more complex and, as a result, treasury standardisation becomes a topic that businesses embrace earlier in their expansion journeys than in the past. When short-term business objectives of expansion take precedence over medium- and longer-term efficiency or visibility, treasurers face fragmented ecosystems that don't communicate with one another.

Just as a common example, when establishing operations in a new jurisdiction, key stakeholders often overlook how the financial partners in the new regions will fit within the existing tech and financial stack and how data will be received and processed. When growth is at stake, speed becomes a priority. This rapid expansion is usually marked by the accumulation of new banking platforms from all around the world, payment systems, and new entities with their own policies. The results are usually seen further down the road and are only taken seriously when they start to impact daily treasury operations.

The Treasury Benchmarking Survey from BCG confirmed that treasuries with standardised operations and modern IT systems exhibit higher productivity compared to their peers. The improved performance is a direct result of their ability to accurately track cash positions in real time, standardise payment processes, and establish consistent controls. Treasury unification and standardisation also provide a foundation for advanced financial strategies such as forex risk management and dynamic cash forecasting.

Treasury system fragmentation is a persistent obstacle for modern businesses, both those already established and those still in the growth phase. It usually occurs organically: treasury functions evolve and grow, adding new systems and financial partners to address specific needs without considering the impact on the overall financial ecosystem and architecture. The result is a patchwork of technologies with data silos, contradictory and incomplete information sources, and significant manual reconciliation work.

The financial impact of fragmentation is a bigger problem than it may seem. Manual processes introduce a high probability of error, with research estimating 1–5% error rates for manually entered financial data. These errors compound as data moves through systems, creating cascading inaccuracies in financial reporting and forecasting, and exposing the business to financial and compliance risks.

Not surprisingly, organisations with fragmented systems will typically spend more time on routine treasury activities compared to those with standardised platforms, diverting skilled treasury professionals away from value-adding analytical work.

Disjointed treasury systems directly impact financial performance – not just efficiency. Most notably, cash visibility becomes severely limited, with treasury teams struggling to maintain an accurate, real-time view of global positions. Without complete visibility, excess cash often sits idle in low-yield accounts while other entities may simultaneously be borrowing at higher rates. Consolidating data manually does not work in this case, as by the time it's aggregated and analysed, it's already out of date and cannot be acted upon.

Data discrepancies represent another significant risk. When financial information must be manually transferred between systems, error rates increase dramatically. These discrepancies often aren't detected until reconciliation processes or even audits are completed, delaying reporting, leading to poor decisions, and increasing compliance and reputational risk.

Treasury unification becomes even harder when a business operates across multiple global subsidiaries. Each entity will typically operate in its own regulatory environment, with local banking relationships, currency considerations, and financial practices. This creates localised financial systems that serve the immediate operational needs but create significant barriers to consolidated financial visibility and group-level treasury management.

Time zone differences further complicate the seamless flow of data between subsidiaries. With the data being available only during business hours, treasury teams might miss out on critical opportunities such as investments or hedging decisions. These issues with timing and consolidation then further cascade into suboptimal cash utilisation and poor FX risk management.

Lastly, each additional region adds a layer of compliance, with regulatory requirements such as tax regulations, banking laws, capital controls, and reporting requirements which vary significantly between countries. Between multiple entities, treasury teams need to navigate a complex web of sometimes contradictory requirements. Business operations might even be impacted as supplier and intra-company transactions across borders face additional scrutiny related to anti-money laundering regulations and sanctions compliance.

Unifying treasury rests on three foundational pillars that collectively create a cohesive financial ecosystem. Each pillar addresses specific aspects of the fragmentation challenge while supporting the broader goals of enhanced visibility, control, and efficiency.

1. Standardise the Financial Data

Standardising the data is the first step in the process of unifying treasury. It means establishing consistent formats, definitions, and taxonomies across all financial information, regardless of region. With greater consistency, the exchange between systems becomes smoother and a robust technology architecture can help build a single source of truth for financial decision-making. To begin, you can create a unified chart of accounts that harmonises financial categorisations across entities and regions.

Standardised data not only streamlines reconciliation but also unlocks advanced analytics that would be impossible with fragmented information sources. Treasury departments can identify patterns in cash flows, detect anomalies that might indicate fraud, and develop more accurate forecasting models.

2.Clean Up the Processes

By standardising processes, treasury teams can operate to the same standard regardless of location, entity, or transaction type. This uniformity eliminates variance in how financial activities are conducted, reduces errors, and makes outcomes – including reporting and forecasting – more predictable.

Standardised processes deliver significant benefits for treasury operations:

Reduced training time: Regardless of where they are based, new treasury or finance team members can be onboarded faster if processes follow a consistent pattern across the organisation.

Enhanced compliance: Keeping the same standards and processes across all business units and the group as a whole means regulatory requirements can be easily verified and implemented.

Improved scalability: When scaling internationally, the same standard processes can be deployed to new business units or geographies to ensure smooth operations and compliance.

Increased automation potential: Consistent processes, together with good-quality data, create a solid foundation to automate certain activities down the line and further improve efficiency.

3. Upgrade and Consolidate Technology

Consolidating technology means bringing all systems that feed into treasury and financial data together and integrating them so that they can exchange information seamlessly, without silos or delays. This approach requires replacing the patchwork of legacy systems, spreadsheets, and manual processes with a cohesive technology stack built around a central TMS (treasury management system) and an ERP.

Innovation in the finance space, including Open Banking and APIs, has contributed to the rise of unified financial platforms that consolidate key processes under one login and interface. These systems integrate cash management, treasury, accounts payable/receivable, and FX operations into a cohesive command centre and deliver benefits that effectively solve the silos and lack of visibility that plague treasury teams.

Improved Visibility and Decision-Making

The most immediate benefit of unified treasury solutions is dramatically improved cash visibility. By consolidating data from all subsidiaries, financial institutions, and processes, these platforms provide treasury teams with a complete, real-time view of the organisation's global cash position. With that, treasurers are equipped to make more informed decisions around liquidity management, investments, and financing.

Visibility is not where it ends. Because the data is up-to-date and comprehensive, it allows businesses to run advanced analytics for cash flow forecasting, predict future positions in line with market trends, and detect anomalies that might indicate fraud or operational issues. With better forecasts and complete visibility, businesses are in a better position to protect themselves from market turbulence and take advantage of opportunities – giving them a competitive edge and ensuring financial stability.

Operational Efficiency

Unified platforms dramatically reduce manual processing through end-to-end automation of routine treasury and financial activities such as manual data entry, reconciliation, and report generation. In particular, by combining accounts payable and collections under one platform, businesses get better oversight of incoming payments and cash outflows to optimise working capital. The ROI coming from better working capital, more time for strategic initiatives, and better financial planning exceeds any savings from sticking to old processes.

Financial Cost Reduction

Optimising working capital is not the only way that unified financial platforms help businesses improve the bottom line. By aggregating all banking relationships in one place and gaining complete visibility of transactions and fees, organisations are in a better position to negotiate fee structures or eliminate redundant services. Organisations implementing unified treasury platforms typically reduce bank fees by 15–30% through improved visibility and relationship management.

Selecting the right unified treasury platform is critical to implementation success. The evaluation process should consider both current requirements and future growth plans, ensuring the selected solution can scale with the organisation. Key evaluation criteria should include:

Functional coverage of the key treasury processes:

cash management

liquidity management

payments

collections

foreign exchange capabilities

Integration capabilities with existing bank accounts and ERP systems

Ability to serve in the current and potential future jurisdictions

Fyorin offers a unified cash management and treasury management platform that addresses many of the standardisation challenges. By providing integrated cash management, payments, and financial automation capabilities, Fyorin enables organisations to standardise their treasury operations without the complexity of long implementation projects. With native integrations to ERPs and API connections to over 5,000 global financial institutions, Fyorin eliminates many of the integration challenges that typically slow standardisation efforts. To learn more about how Fyorin can support your treasury standardisation journey, explore our treasury management solutions.

Treasury standardisation represents a strategic opportunity to transform financial operations from a collection of disparate processes and systems into a cohesive, value-generating function. By implementing a unified standard for data, processes, and interconnected technologies that seamlessly pass data between each other, organisations can achieve unprecedented visibility into their cash positions, reduce operational costs, and mitigate financial risks. The journey toward standardisation requires careful planning, strong governance, and appropriate technology selection, but the benefits justify the investment.