Study Identifies Trends Affecting Australian and NZ Treasuries

As security concerns and the need for additional resources continue to drive IT investment for treasury functions, a study conducted by SunGard and the Finance and Treasury Association in Australia (FTA) has identified that 48% of Australian and New Zealand treasury systems are now cloud-based.

The survey was conducted with 54 senior treasury professionals in Australia and New Zealand. Key findings from the survey include:

• Seventy-eight per cent anticipate continued growth in treasury in the cloud.
• Twenty-eight per cent indicated technology-related issues were their greatest challenges, followed by improving cash flow forecasting (22%) and risk management (19%).
• For treasurers relying on in-house (not hosted) systems, lack of internal IT resources was their greatest problem (54%).
• Of those with internal systems, 44% were considering moving to a cloud-based system and 78% recognised the value of managed upgrades and outsourced exception handling.

“While the treasury technology landscape continues to evolve, treasurers’ fundamental priorities remain the same as ever; functionality and integration,” said John Filippis, vice-president (VP) solution architecture Asia Pacific, SunGard AvantGard.

“Hosted, hosted and managed or software-as-a-service solutions [SaaS] can help meet and maintain compliance needs without having to upgrade and rebuild internal systems – a costly and time consuming process.”

SunGard has also released the latest of its case studies, describing how Qantas Airways has migrated the treasury operation to its private cloud hosting for reduced operational risk and costs.