In line with ABB\u2019s wider vision to \u2018outrun\u2019, the group\u2019s Corporate Treasury team has been working to become leaner and more efficient in recent years. In the words of Jan Hausin, ABB\u2019s Cash Management Workstream Lead Europe, the focus has been \u201call about automation, centralising control and reducing risk\u201d.<\/p>\n
In recent years, ABB has been proactive in modernising its treasury structures, including a project launch to roll out its in-house bank (IHB) globally. The group implemented a global payments on-behalf-of (POBO) concept, where the IHB legal entity executes accounts payables, salary and tax payments for group companies around the world where legally permitted. This effort has been very successful. Whereas five years ago hundreds of bank accounts were used to carry out payments locally, today more than 60% of ABB\u2019s global payables are made from less than 10 bank accounts. POBO is in use for 16 currencies globally. Direct debit collections (collections on-behalf-of, aka COBO) are also carried out via the IHB legal entity.<\/p>\n
The transition to an IHB model stems in part from the finance leadership\u2019s move to a centralised corporate treasury function; a departure from the devolved structure that previously existed. This shift, which began in 2019, has seen ABB move from a country-specific treasury model \u2013 whereby country organisations such as Germany, the US, China and India had their own treasury function \u2013 to regional, process-led teams.<\/p>\n
The regional centres, known internally as \u2018Cash Management Centres of Expertise\u2019 (CAM CoE), now report into ABB\u2019s central treasury engine in Zurich. Hausin heads up the CAM CoE Europe, reporting to Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Carter, Global Head of Cash Management, who oversees the group\u2019s corporate Cash Management function from its Zurich headquarters.<\/p>\n
Hausin cites technology as a key enabler for the transition. This took the form of the group\u2019s migration, also started in 2019, to SAP S\/4HANA \u2013 the strategic project being undertaken by SAP customers to modernise their core enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems \u2013 as outlined in Figure 1.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe migration to SAP S\/4HANA was a major collaborative team effort between the Treasury, Information Systems and the Finance teams, who were the key enablers on this journey, and we now operate on a very powerful system,\u201d he says. The move away from regional systems to a global platform gave ABB the scalability and functionalities it needed to operate a global IHB and its core concepts: payments, collections and receipts on-behalf-of as well as book transfers for internal flows.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithout this sophisticated technology we wouldn\u2019t be where we are right now,\u201d continues Hausin. \u201cOver the past three years we\u2019ve gone from a country-by-country set-up to a truly global workstream and a process-led, scalable organisation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carter agrees, noting that standardisation was integral in the transition from \u201cspokes of the wheel in different countries into one global hub\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In line with ABB\u2019s wider vision to \u2018outrun\u2019, the group\u2019s Corporate Treasury team has been working to become…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38719,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[130],"tags":[232,21864,7100,22539,10111,12784,22538],"class_list":["post-38718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-abb","tag-abb","tag-corporate-treasury","tag-deutsche-bank","tag-in-house-bank","tag-payments","tag-treasury","tag-virtual-accounts"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116291021213492578","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38718\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}