How do corporate treasuries successfully implement a TMS?
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.
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Ali Curi: Hi everyone, and welcome to Treasury ConversatION. I'm Ali Curi. On today's episode, we'll explore how corporate treasuries can maximize their investment in a treasury management system by highlighting implementation best practices, and some common project pitfalls to avoid.
Adam Volpe from ION Treasury will discuss how a successful TMS implementation is foundational to maximizing ROI and user experiences. Whether you're in the middle of a treasury implementation, planning to start one soon, or wish to compare these tips with your prior project experiences, this episode is packed with insights you won't want to miss.
Let's get started.
Adam Volpe, welcome to the podcast. 
Adam Volpe: Thank you, Ali. Great to be here today. How are you? 
Ali Curi: I'm doing great. Before we get to our conversation, let's learn a little bit more about you. Tell us about your background and what your current role and responsibilities are at ION. 
Adam Volpe: I'd love to. So I've been at ION for over 14 years now and I've spent more than eight of those years directly implementing treasury trading and risk management software for our customers.
I've had the benefit of implementing software across a wide variety of customers of all shapes and sizes ranging from small to mid sized regional banks up to some of the world's largest global multinational corporations. Through those experiences I've learned a ton about effective implementation projects and how those experiences might be beneficial to some of our listeners.
Ali Curi: Well, Adam, that's an excellent background for today's topic. So, how do you recommend we begin to approach the subject of a TMS implementation best practices? 
Adam Volpe: I think it's important to first recognize how a TMS is becoming more and more crucial to corporations around the world. These solutions drive increased efficiency while reducing operational risk simultaneously.
And that is the beauty of a successfully implemented treasury management system. The challenge for many companies is effectively evaluating and implementing the solution in a way that provides them that lasting value. And today we'll cover some of these best practices for implementation planning to help boost your odds for success.
Ali Curi: Many companies that are satisfied TMS users often had successful implementation projects. So when starting a TMS evaluation process, where should companies begin? 
Adam Volpe: So I recommend that companies start by outlining clear objectives. Think about what within your treasury operation needs improvement today.
Understand what you want your TMS to improve. Perhaps you're looking to improve your cash forecasting. Think about in what ways you'd like to see that happen and how you'd measure that improvement. Perhaps you're looking to reduce your bank fees. Think about by how much and at what banks. Or perhaps you're looking to automate manual or error prone processes.
Think about how much time or cost could that save the business. Outlining your objectives clearly and pairing them with measurable goals helps set the foundation for your organization to measure progress over time. 
Ali Curi: That sounds like a great place to begin. In your experience, what happens when a TMS project is not shaped by clear objectives?
Adam Volpe: Without clear objectives, it becomes much more challenging to extract maximum value from the solution. Alignment of project and stakeholder teams will also be a consistent challenge, and this often leads to project timeline and cost overruns, or worse yet, a failed project altogether. 
Ali Curi: Okay, so after a team clearly outlines its objectives, what's next to consider?
Adam Volpe: What's next to consider is establishing the right team and project governance model, and this has huge influence on your success. Strong project teams are constituted with subject matter experts from all business and IT areas, and should be individuals that are effective communicators, quick learners, and strong collaborators.
You also need support from an effective steering committee of executive stakeholders from Treasury, IT, and your vendor implementation partners where applicable. This committee ensures the presence and execution of a governance model to help mitigate issues as they arise and before they derail your project.
Ali Curi: Okay, so in your opinion, why has this proven to be the case? If a project doesn't have the proper formation of the project team and executive stakeholders, is it doomed to fail? 
Adam Volpe: Well, without it, I think it's harder to deliver to plan. You're going to encounter more surprises and you'll be less equipped to handle them.
And generally that doesn't translate well to success. I can recall a particular project where we had an accounting subject matter expert who was a fairly new hire, joined the project team. And because she didn't have the right experience on the project team, ended up giving the project team incorrect requirements and yielded a poor design.
We didn't encounter this issue. It didn't come up until later on in the project. And while it took the team a few weeks to resolve, and ultimately we were able to navigate through it, had the team spent more time appointing an appropriate project team member at the start, that would have been a several week period that we would have avoided altogether.
On another project, We encountered a steering committee where the executives from their business and IT teams were completely misaligned in terms of their objectives. They had competing priorities, which led to unclear direction for the project team. Had this team better aligned on project objectives and priorities at the start, the journey would have been much smoother for all involved.
So in summary, with a strong project team and a steering committee in conjunction, they really enable one another and propel the project to success. The project team will raise issues and the steering committee will help that team overcome those challenges, forging a path to go live. 
Ali Curi: Great. Thanks for sharing that with us, Adam.
You mentioned the all important word, "plan." Can you talk to us about planning and why must it be considered another pillar of successful TMS implementations? 
Adam Volpe: Yeah, this may be the most impactful point of all. I'm a strong believer in the idea that success is linearly related to the depth and comprehensiveness of your project plan.
What matters is the detail within the plan. You need to ensure that all of your requirements are represented and are aligned with the objectives we spoke about, that you set at the beginning of the project. Many companies overlook a high-quality plan, one that has the right degrees of depth and breadth to successfully deliver on time and under budget.
Ali Curi: Adam, share with our listeners some specific areas of TMS implementation that are often overlooked or understated. What things do you need to be sure are included in these plans to avoid an unsuccessful outcome? 
Adam Volpe: Three areas to highlight today, and the first of which is data migration. Data is the linchpin to your treasury operation.
It's crucial to dedicate planning to this subject as a result. When done well, it requires coordination between your IT vendor and business teams, which means you need a strong, detailed plan in support of those activities. Your TMS project is an opportunity to transform your business, and it's really no different when it comes to your data.
I recommend investing time in not only migrating your existing data model as it is, but identify some ways to enrich or improve the way you capture data going forward so that you can use it to transform and propel your treasury business into the future. I recall a particular example where we were on a project, the team was in the midst of migrating their data as it was, and they realized the way in which they were capturing some of that data limited their intelligence.
And by making a really small change to the way in which that data was captured, in terms of level of granularity, they were able to better route payments to a number of banks that actually reduced their global bank fees by over 20%. 
Ali Curi: I can imagine how data migration could get overlooked, but when you describe it the way that you have, it's clearly important and also presents an opportunity in itself to improve the business.
Adam Volpe: That's exactly right, Ali. So the second area for project plan consideration I'll bring up today is with respect to training. You can have the best software and team in the world, but it won't make up for implications on user experience of a poorly trained team. In my experience, there is no faster way to dilute the value of your solution than overlooked or poor end user training.
Ensuring these users know how to efficiently and effectively execute the software application is one of the most commonly overlooked elements of a project plan. Training is too often viewed as a one off transactional experience and in my view it's a poor way to get maximum value out of your TMS.
Alternatively, the best way to view training is as an ongoing process and not a singular event. Successful projects ensure expert users are trained at project inception, who then in turn train the end users during the project's build and test activities. In my years, I've seen projects fail due to poor training of end users, either preventing go live outright or simply yielding poor results afterwards.
Familiar users lead to greater user experience, which is directly correlated with higher ROI on your investment. 
Ali Curi: Well, it makes perfect sense, right? You can't drive a car without learning how to operate it first. So it's no different when it comes to software. So the better the training, the better the experience.
Adam Volpe: That's an appropriate analogy. I agree. The third topic for top implementation plan inclusion is testing. And nothing is more important than verifying the solution works and without a proper plan, you may not be in a position to evaluate your solution until it's too late. Several types of testing activities must be considered.
These vary depending on project scope and complexity, but generally will include activities such as unit testing, integration testing, functional testing, UAT, and parallel testing, just to name a few. And each of them have their own distinct purpose and value added to a project plan. Unit testing is isolated simple tests of basic functions and features.
Whereas integration testing helps verify the flow of information within and outside of your TMS platform. Functional testing is an evaluation of use cases or business scenarios. UAT, or User Acceptance Testing, is a near final form of testing, with our end users participating directly. And lastly, Parallel Testing is a comparative evaluation of system outputs with legacy platforms or processes.
I'll also give a special mention to Performance or Stress Testing as another commonly overlooked area of implementations. That is until your audit team raises a concern about it at the 11th hour. It's critically important to consider all types of these testing activities when you're planning your TMS project in order to make sure that the solution is going to meet your stated objectives.
Beyond including the right testing activity types, strong plans also allow for remediation and retesting cycles, which will boost solution quality and effectiveness at the end. And another good idea is to clearly define entry and exit criteria for each testing phase. So the teams are clear on how the project can proceed to the next phase.
Lastly, it's advisable to include some contingency time built into your schedule ahead of time. This way, sometimes inevitable project delays can be more easily absorbed into the schedule without it impacting months of activities planned down the line.
ION Ad: This episode is brought to you by ION. ION offers treasury management products like Reval, which is a SaaS-based treasury risk and payment solution, supporting bank connectivity, market data, and more. All backed by award-winning customer service. To learn more, visit us at iongroup.com/treasury or email us at treasury@iongroup.com.
Ali Curi: Thank you, Adam. Those are some valuable insights. I like how you define the testing activity types and explained how they add incremental value to a comprehensive testing plan. You've shared a lot of great thoughts with us today on what to consider an effective implementation plan. Any final thoughts or advice for Treasury teams currently in the process of selecting and implementing a TMS?
Adam Volpe: Yes. Thanks, Ali, this has been great. I'll end with some encouragement to approach your TMS implementation as a way to start anew. Establish new and improved processes to transform your Treasury operation. Well-planned and well-executed projects consistently deliver value for years. And hopefully today you've picked up on some useful tips to employees you think about embarking on your TMS implementation journey.
Thanks for tuning in. 
Ali Curi: Adam Volpe, thank you for visiting us today on the podcast. 
Adam Volpe: 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.