Developing an ROI model for selecting a TMS
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Ali Curi: Treasury ConversatION is an ION podcast where we discuss topics of importance with CFOs, group treasurers, and treasurers. Join us as we explore critical topics with industry leaders, product owners, and subject matter experts providing insights and strategies tailored to the dynamic world of treasury management.

Hi everyone, and welcome to Treasury ConversatION. I'm Ali Curi. In this episode, Jacqui Drew from ION Treasury and Tracey Knight, co-founder of the consulting firm, Real Treasury, will discuss why it's important for your company to build a rock solid ROI model, choosing the right TMS. Today's guests will share their experience on the necessity of ROI calculations and strategies for building ROI models, along with key components for a strong business case, and recommendations for any organization preparing for a TMS selection.

Let's get started. Jacqui Drew, welcome to the podcast. 

Jacqui Drew: Thanks Ali, great to be here. 

Ali Curi: And also joining us, Tracey Knight. Hi, Tracey. 

Tracey Knight: Hi. Thank you so much for having me today. 

Ali Curi: Thank you for joining us. Jacqui, let's start with you. Share with us a little bit about your background and your role at ION. 

Jacqui Drew: I am a mum to two beautiful girls and I juggle looking after them as well as leading our sales and the account management team for ION Treasury.

So essentially what that means is I help customers select and implement and ultimately help to drive value from the treasury technology. Been with the company for about 14 years. Prior to that I was with Deloitte, I went in a treasury advisory role in South Africa, in the US and now here in the UK where I'm based.

Ali Curi: And Tracey, please tell us a little bit about your background and Real Treasury and your role there. 

Jacqui Drew: I have been in and around treasury for, I'm almost afraid to say it, over 30 years now, and a variety of positions from being that of a practitioner to then jumping to the vendor side and having been in sales support, doing demos, implementation, and my last role as VP of client success.

Before going out on my own and consulting in a practice and then eventually joining up with another consultant to form Real Treasury, where I am one of the two partners. We specialize in companies selecting treasury technology better. I say better because all too often companies hear about these horror stories and our goal is to help prevent them. To prevent companies from picking a product based on great marketing or a good salesperson.

And instead we help them really, truly focus on their requirements so they get the long-term value that technology promises. 

Ali Curi: Great, thank you. Let's dive in. Jacqui, let's start with you. Let's have both of you explain what you mean when you talk about developing an ROI model when selecting treasury technology.

Why is it essential for organizations to develop a comprehensive ROI model when selecting a TMS? 

Jacqui Drew: That's a great question. I think the starting point is that really to invest in technology costs money and takes up resources. And so as companies are being asked to more, with less and are facing cost cutting pressures across the organizations, it's really important that for every penny that is being spent the organizations can drive value, as Tracey just said. So in order to invest in technology, you need to make sure that you're gonna get some benefits on the back of that. And the ROI calculator, so the return on investment calculators, is just that. It's a calculator to help you quantify and to put some numbers behind where you expect the value to be driven from when you go to look in to invest in some technology.

I think the key is to, when you're going about that ROI calculator, and we'll certainly talk about it as we go through this podcast, it really makes you think about, "What do you want this technology to have?" Thinking about that sort of future end state, and that's really a good practice. And then the ROI calculator is how can you then quantify that to incorporate that into your business plan?

Tracey, I don't know if you think about it in the same way or have some other thoughts? 

Tracey Knight: I think it also helps to quantify that ROI, so that when you get to the end of the project, you can actually say, this is the value we've gained. We had these requirements, we went about and implemented the way we planned, and we had success in driving these numbers. So as an organization, a treasury organization, and as individuals, you are better able to quantify your value and there's no better way for treasury to begin to, or continue, to elevate their position within their company, their necessity within a company.

Than by saying, "This is the value and the benefit we offer the organization." 

Ali Curi: Tracey, let's continue with you for a minute. Do companies still need to perform the ROI calculations despite the evolving business landscape? 

Jacqui Drew: Yes, most definitely. Many complex organizations in particular have to perform an ROI just to get the dollars to invest in the project.

Companies have limited budgets and you have to compete for those dollars. So driving a strong ROI is the best way to compete for those dollars to get approval to run a project. 

Ali Curi: Jacqui, would you give us your thoughts? 

Jacqui Drew: I agree with what Tracey said. I think also, we are seeing businesses evolve, in terms of where they place their priorities.

Across organizations, so you know, a lot more greater focus in today's age around security, around cyber, around the technology that you use. So even that whole concept has now become like a new added feature when you're thinking about the actual return on investment calculator. That's like now a whole new section in itself.

So I think that's really important. I think also as organizations look to invest as a business, as an actual organization, what are their objectives and what is the strategy? Whether they want to acquire some other companies, whether they wanna invest in some new products, it's treasury really needs to support all of that.

So being able to have that ROI, where you're not only thinking about, "Well, what is this generate for the treasury function?," but actually for the business as a whole, I think is really useful and a good way to look at it, that you can drive value. 

It was interesting, we were at a client recently where, they were saying that they've been using their treasury management system for many years. But they said often no one else outside of treasury will know what they use or be even be aware of what the technology's capable of, because it always does what it needs to do. It's only when something goes wrong. Then suddenly do people ask questions, "Oh, what technology would you use? Do we need to invest more in this space?"

So for them, actually, they said, " We don't get allocated any budget because nobody asked any questions, because everything just runs as is. So I think that's also a pivot that treasurers need to have is, "Well, great, if everything's running great, that's awesome, but actually could we do more?"

So could we do more with technology and could that enable the wider business to be more successful? And I think that's a different play on how the calculator can be used as well. 

Ali Curi: Well, let's get into some of the practicalities for companies. How can companies build a comprehensive ROI that includes both hard and soft dollar savings as well as opportunity costs?

Tracey, let's start with you. 

Tracey Knight: I think when you first start talking about hard dollar savings, we're not talking about people reallocation. We're talking about real savings, real money in the bank, so to speak. So we look at things like increased interest income, or decreased interest expense. When we're looking at investments or debt, those are real hard dollar savings.

Similarly on the FX side, if you invest in a technology that helps you compete your FX bids, you're able to drive out cost. And so those are real dollar savings that you start building your ROI with. And then beyond that, you start looking for, "Where can we automate? Where can we start saving time so that people can do more different work? So that we're automating as much as possible."

Typically, we're not talking about getting rid of any person. We're able to automate 40% of someone's job, you're not going to let that person go. You're going to have them do some other work. So those are softer dollar savings, but very real, because that 40% of work that they might do differently than they did before, that is adding more value.

It's a little bit softer and harder to quantify, but it's real savings that you know exist. And then even beyond that, there's this kind of, I'll call it "The Intangible Savings" of every time you're able to provide more accurate data, better data, then you know the decisions that follow from that aren't likely better as well.

Sometimes it's more of an opportunity cost. You're doing things better. And you can't always put a dollar around it, but it exists. That increased confidence you have when you provide data to your treasurer or your CFO that has value. Can't always be quantified, but it definitely has value. 

Jacqui Drew: Yeah, and I think Tracey, just on that first point, I mean in terms of the hard dollar savings, I think it's sometimes quite easy, to think of the examples. Like you say, your interest income, your interest expense, like you said, really good point about your FX deals. Actually, if you can bid on them, you could get much more competitive bids. But I think it's also going like a layer deeper than that, isn't it? If you don't have a technology to be able to understand what is your net FX exposure, you could actually be over spending on hedging strategies because you could be going out and hedging 500 trades, and potentially you could only need to hedge 20 trades if you could do some netting.

So taking it down into, like that lower level and really looking at the whole kind of income statement and thinking about what are all of these areas that potentially if we had technology, we could be saving some. I guess bank fee analysis is another area. A lot of companies just take it for granted, okay, these are the fees I'm being charged.

Okay, this is what I have to be charged, but how often are they a) actually checking that is what their contracts says they should be charged and b) then looking to look again across their relationship banks and thinking, "Well, actually I could be saving some money if I moved some part of my activity to some of these other banks."

Actual hard dollar savings, if you go line by line, there's probably quite a few areas that you can really get some savings on. 

Tracey Knight: That's very true. When you have global visibility of your cash, you're even able to think about things like intercompany loans and pooling and netting. All of those things vary differently than you do without technology.

In fact, when you're able to automate these things, you can rethink so many different processes and approaches to your daily work and drive down cost by driving out the number of transactions, by making better and more strategic transactions, by keeping things internal and not doing everything with The Street, so you're gaining those external costs. There's so many different ways you can get true hard dollar savings when you have a global picture of your organization and a better understanding of the strategic opportunities to do things differently and better. 

Jacqui Drew: And then maybe just also touch on those opportunity costs and maybe some inherent costs that organizations might not be thinking about or might not think to include in the actual ROI calculator. I think two that always stand out for me is, one is sort of the audit costs. So you know, if organizations are still using spreadsheets to run their treasury, who owns those spreadsheets?

Who knows all the coding behind those spreadsheets. What risk is there to manual error? What controls are in place? And so anybody wants to get an audit report that has specific mentions of these, so you know, what is the cost of getting a qualified audit report that does mention these things? And you have to go out and invest in huge amount from a control, security perspective to do that.

So I think actually trying to factor that into consideration is good. Not necessarily a hard dollar cost, but a cost that your business could be exposed to. And I guess the other one that's more prevalent now is fraud, and the risk of fraud. I think there's a stat like 95% of organizations will experience some level of fraud.

And obviously that is significantly reduced and you invest in technology that can specifically cater to this. And if you don't have that, I mean that number could be massive for an organization. So being able to take a percentage of that in your actual ROI calculator I think is also another kind of input that's really useful.

Tracey Knight: True, opportunity cost is harder to quantify, but you know that they're very real cost. It's the value that you're gaining by not making mistake, by not having certain things happen. Having better visibility, having a better forecast can help you prevent overdrafts. So when you look at maybe how often you've had them in the past, I say overdraft, of course, I'm thinking more US not other countries.

But when you think of what you've had in the past and maybe what you'll be able to prevent in the future, that's real savings once again, harder to quantify, but the savings exist. So you've gotta take a stab at coming up with some reasonable numbers about how much, either less fees you might have, or less errors you might create, less opportunity for bad things to happen, and try and put some very reasonable numbers around those that you can back up.

So if someone challenges you on your ROI calculation, you are able to explain why and how, the numbers that you've used are very reasonable and valuable in the calculations that you've made. Even when you think about the mistakes that can be made in spreadsheets, when you have some very complicated spreadsheets, even more so if you inherited the spreadsheet. That the numbers that you calculate, can sometimes there can be some errors that are embedded a little bit further down, but you're using these spreadsheets, if you're not using technology, to do your quarterly disclosures, to come up with the numbers that literally are going in the numbers that are being reported externally to The Street.

And so if you find that you made some material errors, then you've gotta go back and restate. There's a cost to that. The cost and reputation, a cost in the audit, and the actual time that goes into it. These have very real dollar implications that can't be overlooked. 

Ali Curi: Jacqui, you spoke earlier about building a business case, which may or may not include an ROI calculator.

So what else goes into building a business case? How can companies build a strong business case for TMS selection? 

Jacqui Drew: Really great question, and I think as you say, I mean, different organizations will have different requirements as to what this business case looks like. I think certainly an ROI calculator could be one of the elements of the business case, but I think a good starting point for a business case is to think about, what is that future end state? How do you want your organization to look with the benefit of technology? So what do you want automated within the process? Who do you want to be using that treasury technology? Whether that's just the group, whether that's all of your subsidiaries across the globe, and then, what do you want the technology to be able to do?

Predominantly treasurers are there to mitigate risk if there is risk to manage that risk appropriately. So thinking about all of your risks that the organization is exposed to, and then thinking about how technology can help that. So I think first of all, it's thinking about that future end state. What do you really wanna get to?

Then I think it's around challenging kind of the status quo. I think, we often see organizations that perhaps have relied on spreadsheets looking to invest in a TMS, and they wanna just take how they do everything today and force it into a TMS. And that's not always the best way to do things.

Maybe the way that you manage your cash or maybe the way that you do your forecasting is not the most optimal way or maybe the type of workflow that you have, even, might not be the best optimal workflow. So I think, certainly obviously using consultants, engaging with your vendors to ask what is best practice learning from the best people in the market.

I think you can often challenge the way you're doing things and maybe use it as an opportunity to reset and rebase how you want your treasury process to look like. And then I think the other is really thinking about what is the value we're gonna get. Treasury really wants to be driver of value for the organization, so doing the ROI calculator I think is really, really useful to be able to do that. I think that's really good, a good tool.

And then I think it's, in terms of your business plan, it's just thinking about the process. So, as Tracey mentioned earlier, a lot of organizations go out and invest in, in technology, but actually could they do that better? One thing we'll talk a little bit later is around, actually, spending time in a workshop, you're gonna get a lot more value from that than, just reading a thousand questions in an RFP.

So actually thinking about the process. To go and invest in new technology, I think is a critical part of your actual business plan. And Tracey, if you think I'm missing anything on that from a business plan perspective? 

Tracey Knight: No, you stated some very good points. You talked about the future state, but I often encourage companies to really start really by looking at their current state first.

So often they haven't actually evaluated everything that they do, and it can be a good exercise to literally go desk, by desk, by desk at the very beginning of your project to think about what are you doing right now? Where are you seeing those benefits? And those can really start to make you think about that future state in a different way, thinking, "Why are we doing this? Why did we start doing it in the first place?"

Treasury often grows out of the accounting department, so sometimes the bank account structure and some procedures are based on how they're best done in a very manual, spreadsheet-driven world, often even without any treasury knowledge. But then as treasury evolves, and as you think about automation, you've got to rethink every single part of your operation in manual environment with spreadsheets, you've got other spreadsheets to validate the spreadsheets.

So why do you need to keep doing those reports in the future world if you can eliminate the spreadsheet problems in the first place? And so the reports that you do, don't think of everything as literally us just automating and speeding up what you do. If you speed up a bad process, all you did was make the bad happen faster.

So the goal is really truly to improve the operation and to think about everything differently in an automated world. Now, all too often. If you literally don't have an outside view of what best practices are or what the benefits could be over and above what you already know, then you end up literally just making things happen a little bit better, but you don't get the vast improvement that you can get from technology.

Treasury management systems have so much to offer and often these days you hear them kind of getting a bad rap. Products that are simpler to use for less complex treasuries don't fully understand the need and benefit of a complex tool for a complex organization. You can't take a simple tool into an organization that has a complex entity structure, uses complex instruments and expect to get benefit. So going desk by desk, really thinking about what you do and how they can be done better. Thinking about what is unique about your organization, different from maybe other treasuries you've worked in, this is an area where for people who've only been at one company, they sometimes overlook understanding what is unique or different about their company from others, what instruments or things they're doing are kind of non-standard, and making sure they get a product that can handle their uniqueness. So when you really focus literally on all of the different functions that are happening in treasury early on, and use those with your planned future state to drive your requirements. And then let your requirements drive which product you choose, then you can get the benefits that you wanna get, then you'll be able to realize those benefits that you plan for in the ROI. 

Jacqui Drew: That's brilliant, Tracey. Really good.

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Ali Curi: Well, you both have shared a lot of information and let's stick with that topic just for one more second, given your vast experience in having selected probably hundreds of TMS selections over the years. What other recommendations do you have for companies that are preparing for a TMS selection? 

Tracey Knight: Beyond those that we've talked about already? I guess one thing I would suggest is that companies keep the future in mind. Technology is changing so very quickly. AI is here. We're starting to see some of the applications for AI within treasury, and I think we'll continue to at a faster and faster rate. As time goes by, what we're already seeing is not just benefits around forecasting, but around what I'm gonna call "insights."

And you'll see that term used so much across applications, even in our own personal lives, right? Where there might be some kind of AI tool, even for your personal banking, for just about any technology that you have. Even Netflix is all about giving you insights. The insights are what other shows you might wanna see.

And so tools and companies that, vendors specifically, that are really looking to the future of how treasury can best get benefit now and in the future ought to be part of your consideration as you're thinking about the technology in which you might want to invest. So don't think too shortsighted. At the same time, I also recommend companies not think about going from spreadsheets, let's call it base level, to being a world class treasury all at once. And chances are if you're on spreadsheets now, you are not going to be world class in three years. So don't try to think about literally blowing up and changing the whole world all too quickly and having requirements that cover every single thing that you could ever do.

Think strategically, what are we going to be able to do this year, next year, and maybe the year after that to make significant improvement. Let those be your must have requirements where you're focused on those, but don't think that you're gonna go from spreadsheets to world class and include every possible function, every possible thing in your evaluation.

So you've gotta be forward thinking from a vendor perspective and a technology perspective, but don't look too far in the future in terms of how much you as a treasury and a department are going to be able to improve. We all improve in steps and so you don't wanna buy for five or 10 years from now, you wanna buy from now to about three years from now.

Technology's changing too fast to think too far out into the future. 

Jacqui Drew: Yeah, really good points. Tracey. I love the points there about the insights and then I think, thinking about the future sort of in stages I think is really helpful as well. I think the other thing is, just in terms of the, as you preparing to invest in technology, trying to envision the actual day-to-day.

Think about who's gonna be using the technology, where they're gonna be using it, where they're located, what kind of time sense in, and then actually, what you want the technology to actually do. So preparing use cases, I think is where we see companies get, a lot more "Ah, this is how it's gonna be used." So a lot more sort of visualization. So investing the time in those kind of use cases, investing the time, and then doing workshops. I think it's really useful and should be part of the process as well. 

Tracey Knight: Definitely. We highly recommend that clients prepare demo scripts when they get near the end of their evaluation.

Once they've kind of narrowed it down to a few vendors so that they're sure they're comparing apples to apples from a very real perspective of what they need. Focused on those use cases, those requirements that they have, and seeing how they are for each of their kind of top vendors so that they're really focused on whether or not the product can meet that need, not just someone saying yes on an RFP or just saying yes verbally, but are they able to show you how they can do it?

It's too easy to end up with a product that frankly doesn't meet all of your needs. It doesn't work the way you thought it would if you don't do a proper evaluation. 

Ali Curi: Well, so far we've discussed the why and how, but once a TMS is implemented, how should organizations monitor and evaluate what they're achieving with the projected ROI?

Jacqui Drew: I think that's a really good question. You do all of this work, and then if you just put your business case and your ROI calculation in a drawer and walk away, I think you are really missing a track. I would say really important to make sure you sharing that, if you haven't worked on it collaboratively with consultants or your vendor, which I would actually recommend you do, make sure that is being shared with the actual vendor and say, "This is our expectations, this is the return that we are looking to get from this investment."

And then really, holding the teams accountable such that during the implementation, are we on track for that? Are we looking to hit these sort of metrics and objectives that we set ourselves?

And then certainly at the end of the implementation to do a look back. Absolutely. There might be stuff that would've changed, there might have been different priorities come. I think having an open mind being recognizing that there might be some adaptations that are needed, but being able to say, "Have we actually achieved this?"

And on day one, when you implement the solution, you might not actually be able to see the results. So that might just be able to say, "Okay, have we implemented a TMS and is it designed as we expected?" And then assess that, six months, 12 months down the line and say, " Now are we actually getting those benefits?"

So have we been able to see those hard dollar savings because we now have the technology? Have we been able to protect ourselves against fraud risk? Have we been able to limit the audit points that come out at the end of the audit? So using it as a tool throughout those next kind of three year period, has this actually been validated and where we able to achieve what we had set out to achieve?

Tracey Knight: Now using those to drive, I'm gonna call them "KPIs," mature well-run organizations are measuring their performance on a regular basis. So you might let some of the things that you put in the ROI drive some new KPIs perhaps so that you can continue to measure the benefit, continue to measure the performance and the value you get from your system over time.

One of the worst things that you can allow to happen is for your usage and benefit and the value you get from your technology to decrease over time. That can sometimes happen with turnover, with change, you don't ensure that all of your new changes are implemented in your system. Think companies that you acquire or new things that happen; new banks, new instruments, new anything. Everything has to be put in the system just like it was when you first implemented so that your usage of the system, your benefit and value you get from the system continues to stay high. That requires training, getting regular training from the vendor, staying up on the release notes. There are so many things that you can proactively do as an organization, not expecting anything from the vendor, but I mean you, the users, the vendors can do to help ensure that you get continued value and benefit and not just continued, I'd often say increasing value and benefit. 

Because as you start to get some and you free up time, then you should be looking for what else can we do? What can we do next? And so it shouldn't be something that really ends, ever. Your implementation might be your initial implementation, it ends. And you might have phases and things planned for the future, but looking for continued ways to use the system better to use it more, to adopt new things that the vendor might be offering in the system as they have new releases and new offerings that should never end. And if you stay focused on that, if you stay working as a true partnership with your vendor, where you are giving them feedback and they are replying and responding to the things that you, not as an individual but you all of the clients are asking for, then it can be mutually beneficial, a real partnership to both organizations so that you continue to see benefit.

And going back to the KPIs, if those are things that you publish across your company or to management, you can continue to elevate treasury's presence within the organization. As Jacqui said earlier, a lot of people don't even know treasury exists unless something bad happens. I've long felt that we as treasury professionals, often don't talk about ourselves and what we do enough.

It's past time for treasury to be a known part of the finance organization. When I graduated from college, I was a finance major. I don't think I'd even heard the word treasury, and I went to what's considered one of the top business schools. I stumbled across treasury. Didn't know anything about it.

Wouldn't it be great if more and more people knew exactly what treasury was long before they ended up stumbling across it? Because we all talk about it and the value that we bring to our organizations. So KPIs is a start of that. 

Ali Curi: Jacqui, what are your thoughts? 

Jacqui Drew: I love that Tracey, I think so many of us in the treasury world stumbled into getting into treasury.

And I think you absolutely right, but even you read the annual report, there's so much in there. And then treasury's kind of a smaller little section at the end and how can we bring that up much, much, further up in terms of prominence. But I also love the idea of KPIs. When you go to companies, you often see, as you are walking around, KPIs for this division, KPIs for this division. So how do we make sure that treasury is one of those divisions? I think those are great, really great points. And I think, like you say, if you managing the organization through KPIs, you are only gonna get better 'cause you're gonna see very quickly where you're falling short and then you can look to put some areas or areas to improve on and then take some action on the back of that.

Ali Curi: Now we've heard a lot of great information. Thank you for sharing. Let's do a bit of a summary. What's the one big thing you hope listeners will take away from this episode? Jacqui, let's start with you. 

Jacqui Drew: Yeah, I think just as we've been talking, I think the thing that popped up in my head is that quote that says, "If you fail to prepare, then prepare to fail."

And I think that's just really highlighted here in terms of it's not a quick one day you have a meeting with the CFO who says you should invest in technology. A week later, you go and procure a vendor and spend X amount on some technology, really need to go and prepare. Think a lot about these things that we've discussed on the call today.

I think really you taking the time to actually do that preparation, I think will only help you to succeed. That would be my main set of focus on preparation. Tracey, what about you? 

Tracey Knight: I'm debating, "Oh, what's the one thing?" I guess, especially given the nature of my business, I think that companies cannot underestimate the variety and breadth of options that are available to them and stress how important it is to match up you and your company's needs with the right product. If you do that and you're really focused on it early on, making sure that you're choosing the best one for you objectively focused on your requirements versus the things that often influence companies; market leader, marketing, salespeople, great demo person. I like to think I was one of those, a great demo person.

But what really matters is whether a product can meet your requirements. Can it help you get the benefits, real value that you need? And so I just like to see companies succeed and I think technology's so great. That if they go through the selection process and then the implementation process they can get these values, they'll become another technology evangelist just like I am.

Ali Curi: I'm gonna switch gears for a minute and ask for some career advice. Jacqui, what's one habit you've developed that has served you well in your current job? 

Jacqui Drew: That's a tricky one. I think there's lots of things that I'm working on personally every day to be better. I think the one thing that I'm personally working on right now and trying to make it a habit is around, you know I think it's very easy for a lot of people, I speak to my friends, I speak to family, everybody seems to say, "I'm just on calls all day," and I feel like that's my life is, I'm on calls all day.

What I've tried to make a habit is that I block out an hour and a half every single morning. I am definitely my most productive early in the morning. I have standing in my calendar, it's blocked out, not able to be booked by other people, and I use that time to for thinking time. So that might be, that actually go for a walk if there's something that I need to think about. Or it can be time where you know, I need to get my actual work done.

Or it could be, time that actually, I want to use it for working on some bigger projects that, when you are so busy all day, every day you don't actually have time to do that. And I need to be fresh when I'm thinking about those projects. I don't always get it right, somehow there always seems to be some meeting slip in there, but that's the habit that I'm working on right now. 

Ali Curi: Great. And Tracey, same question. What's the one habit you've developed that has served you well in your current job? 

Jacqui Drew: I think of it as like unifying all of the various communications that I have each day.

It seems like information comes in still on my phone and text messages and emails, and I've got a couple of different emails and through Slack and chat and I get some things over WhatsApp and information and people in contacts and questions are coming from so many different sources that I try to at the end of my work day, go through and just look at the various sources to make sure that I'm not skipping anything, that I'm replying to everything timely and letting that kind of help make my plan for the next day. Unlike Jacqui, I'm not a morning person. I definitely am at my best in the early evening, and so I try to make sure that I'm using that time and that I have a plan of all the things that I need to do, and I slot some of those into my calendar because otherwise, you literally, as Jacqui said, can run out of time if you allow others to drive you instead of you driving your own day. And so I just really try to take control of all the information coming at me and have a plan for the next day on how I'm going to tackle them.

Ali Curi: I think that's some great advice to close our episode with Jacqui Drew, Tracey Knight. Thank you both for joining me on the podcast. Let's do it again sometime. 

Jacqui Drew: Absolutely. Thanks very much. Thanks, Tracey. Great to speak again. 

Tracey Knight: Thanks, Jacqui. Thanks Ali. 

Ali Curi: And that's our episode for today. You can follow ION Treasury, on X and on LinkedIn.

Thank you for joining us.