RegionalRisk ManagementTreasury Management
December 1, 2022

People, Prices, Places: Internal Auditors Question Hiring Trends

Internal audit hiring insights: India may be growing less attractive; recruiting talent from the Big Four has downsides. Top companies in North America have looked to India as a leading location for shared services centers and to potentially place at least some internal audit (IA) staff. They have also used the Big Four accounting firms essentially as a default source of new team members. Both of those trends may be wearing thin. One member of NeuGroup for Internal Audit Executives discussing his company’s rapid…
TechnologyTreasury Management
November 17, 2022

Clarifying the Vision: A Treasury Priority Road Map Draws Acclaim

Splitting priorities into categories looking forward four years helps align treasury with finance and support business units. A picture of a treasury road map presented at a recent meeting of NeuGroup for Mega-Cap Assistant Treasurers was worth considerably more than a thousand words, drawing praise and insights from peers. To create it, the treasury team at the NeuGroup member company provided input about their priorities, helping create a vision and road map across four categories of goals: Operational excellence Global cash and…
Financial Planning and AnalysisTechnologyTreasury Management
August 25, 2022

Transformation and the IT/Finance Partnership

Collaborating with IT is essential for transformation success, and new tech solutions may precede process redesign. Finance transformation goes way beyond automation and the implementation of new tech solutions, to include process redesign and talent development. Its goal is to build new finance capabilities, by optimizing processes and reducing the time it takes to collect, compile and cleanse data. The upshot is that staff can focus on higher level activities, such as business partnering and strategic planning. But the modernization…
Senior ExecutiveTreasury Management
June 30, 2022

How Treasury Steps into the Strategic Limelight

Rising rates and a looming recession provide treasury with an opportunity to elevate its profile and and become a leader in board-level conversations. Tough economic conditions have historically highlighted the critical role treasury plays as the champion of corporate liquidity. This happened during 2008-09 and will likely happen again if credit and cash flows begin to contract. This is not new territory for treasurers, many of whom have already evolved to serve new and broader constituents, becoming more strategic, consultative…
Treasury Management
June 30, 2022

The Great Reconsideration: Improving Culture To Improve Retention

While the flexibility provided by remote work is an important factor, the organization’s culture can be the biggest draw. The pandemic triggered a significant shift in employees’ expectations, making finding and retaining talent a top priority for finance executives. Higher employee turnover rates are prompting companies to kick-start new efforts to craft corporate cultures that make people feel welcome and ensure they stay on long-term. It’s not easy. “The labor market is still a challenge, and recruitment is a challenge,” one treasurer…
Treasury Management
June 16, 2022

Former Intel CFO: Don’t Wait for an Invite to Impact Strategy

George Davis (left), here with NeuGroup founder Joseph Neu, urged treasurers gathered at a tech summit in California to dream big and weigh in on strategy. In a keynote address referencing iconic daydreamer Walter Mitty, George Davis—the former CFO of Intel and Qualcomm and the former CFO and treasurer of Applied Materials—urged dozens of treasurers attending NeuGroup’s Tech Strategic Finance Summit Treasurer Day to dream big, take risks and not wait for invitations to apply treasury’s valuable perspective and skill set to a…
Risk ManagementTreasury Management
May 26, 2022

Musical Chairs: Where Should ERM Sit To Create the Most Value?

Some corporates are positioning ERM teams to sit under internal audit or corporate strategy. Many enterprise risk management teams are at an inflection point as they aim to become strategic partners to the business. Some corporates are finding that ERM can add more value to the business by sitting within functions like corporate strategy or internal audit. At a recent meeting of NeuGroup for Enterprise Risk Management, two members who recently experienced a shift in reporting—one to internal audit and the other to…
COVID-19Treasury Management
May 5, 2022

Talent Travails: Loose Lips About Pay and Hybrid Headaches

A younger generation’s transparency about what they earn creates another challenge for finance leaders coping with hybrid work woes. A session on talent at a recent meeting of NeuGroup for Mega-Cap Assistant Treasurers revealed that finance teams already struggling to hire workers amid tight labor markets, demands by candidates for higher compensation and the unwillingness of some of them to spend much, if any, time in the office face additional, less publicized problems: Many younger workers speak freely about how…
TechnologyTreasury Management
April 21, 2022

Stepping-stones to Treasury’s Future Operating Model

Treasurers seeking to align with the rest of the finance org are turning to centers of excellence and shared service centers.Shifting activities to centers of excellence (COEs) and shared service centers (SSCs) figures prominently in the plans of corporate treasury teams overhauling or refining their operating models to, in some cases, better align with the rest of a multinational’s global finance organization. That takeaway surfaced during a session at a recent meeting of NeuGroup for Mega-Cap Treasurers that featured two…
D&ITreasury Management
March 10, 2022

Right Direction, Slow Progress for Women in Finance

The finance sector is notoriously male dominated. And despite some progress over the past decade, there’s still a long way to go before women have an equal voice.By Nilly EssaidesBack in the early 1990s, when I started my career in finance, I was often the only woman in the room. And my colleague Anne Friberg, NeuGroup senior director and peer group leader, says that in the 2000s, when she was facilitating peer group meetings across the country, those rooms had…