Consultants and lots of testing may pay off for corporates picking a single TMS following an acquistion.
The merger of two large technology companies resulted in a highly ambitious integration and upgrade of numerous treasury functions and systems, and provided lessons for one NeuGroup member about setting realistic goals and the value of rigorous testing.
TMS timing. The member, who worked through many long days during the process, walked peers through the decision-making and implementation steps. The acquired company went live on Reval just as the merger closed; the other company had put on hold upgrading its FIS systems, Quantum and Trax, in light of the anticipated acquisition.
Time-intensive. The first step was to decide which treasury management system (TMS) would best suit both companies. This involved:
- Members from the two treasury teams traveling back and forth between offices (yes, pre-coronavirus).
- The completion of multiple vendor demos.
- The involvement of 30 business workstreams.
- 70 senior management executives engaging in more than 80 meetings.
- The IT team logging more than 600 hours on the assessment project alone.
And the winner is… “At the end of the day, we consulted with our top management, took a very deep dive in terms of strategic attributes and requirements, and FIS bubbled to the top,” the member said. But he emphasized that this was the best choice for them based on the specifics of the company and not necessarily the best choice for others. The real takeaway was the thoroughness of the selection process.
More moves. In addition to consolidating the two treasury functions under a single TMS, the companies migrated service bureaus to FIS and adopted the most recent versions of Trax and Quantum. The first year was taken up with planning, including scoping the FIS project, prepping for upgrades and user-acceptance testing (UAT), testing scripts and bank engagements. The meat of the project went live in 2019, with planned enhancements to hedging accounting, eBAM and bank fee tools.
The company learned important lessons:
- Consultants add value. In addition to devoting significant in-house resources, the companies tapped consultancies. Treasury Strategies helped conduct the RFP of TMS vendors, and Deloitte and TSI Consulting were retained to help determine which technologies best suited the two treasury groups, each with different functions and approaches to employing technology.
- The consultancies already have the test scripts and can point to the strengths and weaknesses of different vendors. “So even though you have to pay them, it saves time in the end,” the member said, adding that the extra layer of resources comes in handy when the business side doesn’t have time to do the necessary testing.
Testing, testing, testing. The company tested its work six times over six weekends in the first half of 2019. “All the testing, all the time, did pay off,” the member said. “We found multiple problems in our practice go-lives, and those were rung out of the system. So when we went live it was almost flawless.”
