Data Analytics
Published  7 MIN READ

Data Driven Treasury: Time to Take the Quantum Leap


There’s something delicious about an exclusive interview – especially when it involves Ole Matthiessen, Global Head of Cash Management, Deutsche Bank, candidly discussing the eyebrow-raising results of the bank’s latest corporate treasury survey. This year’s report examines the technologies enabling treasurers to mine for ‘data gold’, as well as the hurdles facing treasury functions as they wrangle more data and aim to deliver greater insights to the business.


Eleanor Hill, TMI (EH): The results of the annual corporate treasury survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit, supported by Deutsche Bank, are hot off the press – and ready to be launched at EuroFinance in Copenhagen. Could you give us a flavour of this year’s study?

Ole Matthiessen, Deutsche Bank (OM): I’m really excited to be able to share highlights of this year’s survey with you. The title of this edition ‘A Quantum Leap: Building a data-driven treasury’ reflects the fact that data is quickly being recognised as a corporate asset. As digitisation sweeps through businesses, the growing volume and depth of financial data available presents a strategic opportunity for the treasury function. Using this data wisely can help treasurers to generate timely cash and liquidity insights, and facilitate faster treasury decision making.

Simply ‘owning’ data is not enough, however; digital transformation is required in order to extract, aggregate, and analyse good quality data. As such, the journey towards data-driven treasury takes time. The survey results therefore enable treasurers to identify how far along they are on that journey, depending on the organisation’s size, complexity, and treasury team structure, for instance.

Bringing together responses from over 300 corporate treasurers across the globe, the report is structured in three sections: