The process is not perfectly seamless. "We still have a two-step process that requires some mapping and reformatting," Schacknies notes. "But considering the amount of data involved, it's remarkably automated." Most importantly, Schacknies adds, the configuration has morphed from a reporting tool to a solution integral to planning and management strategy.

Don't look now, but after years of solutions that fell short of promises, things are finally coming together in the world of financial technology. Vendors that haven't merged are collaborating to make their systems work together seamlessly. Technical standards that make it easier and cheaper to integrate disparate systems are gaining favor. More flexible technological infrastructure, often involving service-oriented architecture (SOA), is becoming de rigueur. Dashboards are at once getting simpler and more robust. While phrases like "seamless integration," "end-to-end solutions," "straight-through processing" and "no more information silos" still describe an ideal world of best practices, the gap between the real and the ideal is closing fast. It seems tantalizingly possible that by the end of the decade–only four short years away–finance staffs could have at their fingertips a single, real-time view of all cash and all risk, across an entire enterprise. Cut-and-paste may become as quaint as calligraphy.

THE TIPPING POINT

"We're at the dawn of the era of financial enterprise applications," insists Sanjay Srivastava, COO of Aceva Technologies, based in San Mateo, Calif. "That game is bringing disparate streams of critical information under one umbrella and presenting it in one view. It will bring consistency across all the information silos and cause data to cascade automatically to where it is needed. Bringing together all that information will let treasury and finance staffs optimize cash management, risk management and regulatory compliance. The concept has been talked about for years, but real progress has started to accelerate in 2006."

What's even more exciting, this latest functional ascent in finance technology is not likely to be limited–at least by price or necessary resources–to only the largest companies. Because of the willingness of tech vendors to form alliances, integrate systems and rely so heavily on open-access technologies like SOA, this single view of cash and risk will be attainable for the middle market without the kind of staggering investments of time and money typical of past advances. "The technology is there today and it's no longer prohibitively expensive," Trema's Jensen claims. "The question now is not, 'What can we do?' It's, 'What do we want to do?'"

How eager are vendors to work together? Consider the case of Srivastava's company, Aceva, and Los Angeles-based Vengroff Williams & Associates (VWA). Aceva makes systems that are used for collections, and VWA does collections work as an outsource provider. "Aceva came to us and said, 'We have quite a few clients in common. Let's work together to build the right infrastructure for them, with no restrictions on where we go with this.' So we did," reports Robert Sherman, VWA's vice president of marketing. "We looked for ways to create integration points and put data in a collaborative, standard format, and we have been able to standardize how the data moves between us." This is high-level vendor collaboration involving joint sales presentations, a single contract that covers service from both companies and even benchmarking using a combined database of client information.

Tech players teaming up is not new, but in past years it has been all about acquisitions–exchanges of proprietary information were going on only among entities that shared common ownership. But now few are bothering to get married–they're only living together, or just dating. "We've seen a systematic shift from consolidation to collaboration, with vendors of complementary software forming alliances to provide better service to their common customers," says treasury automation consultant Dan Carmody, president of Chicago-based TreaSolution Inc. "You see Bank of America collaborating with Chesapeake; Trintech and Kyriba collaborating; KeyBank collaborating with Hyland Software; and SunGard with Captara, just to name a few."

At some companies, there are even executives dedicated to finding such opportunities. At Norwalk, Conn.-based Cartesis, that job falls to Charles Muldoon, the vice president of alliances at the financial solutions provider. "Alliances just make sense," Muldoon says. "I spend all my time looking for ways we can link with everything our customers want us to link to. We need to learn more about each other's systems and how we can get them to work together better to make life easier for our mutual customers."

The ERP system, of course, aspires to be the sun in the financial reporting solar system. Around the system a company's single view of cash and risk can be constructed, based on the A/P, A/R, HR, payroll and treasury already within most ERPs. "We already have visibility into what a treasurer needs for cash flow optimization," boasts Rich Rodgers, vice president of financial applications strategy at Oracle Corp., based in Redwood City, Calif.

But not all modules are created equally, and ERP systems face challenges to integrate with other vendors' systems. To enhance its capabilities, Oracle is building its systems with "integration points," which are a bit like wall sockets–a receptacle into which something may be plugged and work, as long as it's built to work on 110-volt alternating current. SAP has similar technology to enhance compatibility.

Collaboration works best for vendors with large clienteles because of the economies of scale afforded once formats are made compatible. For instance, AOC Solutions, which automates commercial credit card reporting, recently built a mapper for an Oracle ERP customer. With just minimal customization and expense, AOC can reuse that mapper many times over with other Oracle users. So ultimately, the more volume and overlap in the customer base of tech vendors, the easier and cheaper integration becomes. And increasingly, reports Maggie Scarborough, research manager for corporate banking at Financial Insights, based in Framingham, Mass., the big horizontal technology players like IBM, Microsoft and SAP are building foundation reference architecture for activities like corporate banking and then welcoming vendors of specific financial applications into their community or camp.

EXPANDING THE REACH OF TREASURY

Fueling this mating dance has been the expansion of the role of treasury and the increased importance ascribed to a company's ability to generate cash flow, manage risk, organize its supply chain relationships and maintain efficient working capital. Although all of these priority areas involve departments from across a corporation, treasury is increasingly being cast in the role of coordinator. "As treasury gets more and more cross-enterprise responsibility, it's important for us to bring our clients as much of the information they need to do their jobs as we can," reports Kenneth Dummitt, president of treasury solutions provider SunGard AvantGard, based in Calabasas, Calif. "That's why we have formed partnerships with Payformance in the payments area and with Captara in the leasing area. And it's why we acquired GetPaid in the collections area." The rationale behind the acquisitions and partnerships was to provide SunGard AvantGard workstation customers with improved enterprise-wide cash visibility and compliance with regulatory and corporate policies, and ultimately better working capital management.

Treasurers still tend to have a limited view of cash, Dummitt insists. "They can't see out much beyond three to six days, and they only see about 80% of their future cash by volume and even less by transaction," he says. In this next evolution, that may not be sufficient for most companies, particularly with expanding globalization. "We're helping the liquidity management DNA evolve to that higher level, which means visibility of relevant information across all systems and all business units," Dummitt explains.

So what does it really mean to get a single view of cash? Many banks claim that they already offer a single view of cash. Often that means a single view of cash deposited in accounts only at that bank. Through SWIFT, global banks like Deutsche Bank, Citibank and JPMorgan Chase have already established a communication standard that spans all SWIFT-enabled banks and makes multi-bank balance reporting feasible. But a simple cash-balance position, even if it's 100% accurate and real-time, is not enough for even liquidity planning, never mind cash flow forecasting.

To achieve a useful picture of cash flow for forecasting, a system must include feeds from, at a minimum, major bank accounts, short-term cash investments, scheduled debt repayments, tax and dividend payments and A/P and A/R. But in this next reincarnation, tech vendors are thinking more expansively about systems that would also include links to internal sales and budgeting systems as well as the A/P and A/R systems of major supply chain partners. And there are some companies with advanced systems that are already approaching the final reincarnation of cash flow transparency. Leaders in this area include Cisco Systems, Microsoft, Merrill Lynch, Lucent and General Electric.

ONE-STOP INFORMATION SHOPPING

Some financial activities are easier to integrate than others. As p-card programs expand, there is pressure to provide a single view of payments. But to date, success has been limited. "The market certainly wants convergence," notes Jim Pratt, vice president of the MasterCard line of business for Wright Express Corp., a South Portland, Me., commercial card issuer. "Financial people tell me they want to look one place to see all payments, whether they're made with credit card, check, wire or ACH. That capability doesn't exist today, but it will come."

According to David Sum, director of product management for corporate treasury services at New York-based Thomson Financial, one way to measure the success of integration and a single view of critical information is to chart the progress of dashboards–solutions that sit on top of information-gathering tools. A dashboard brings to a single screen all the most pertinent information a person needs to do his job without going to multiple windows to assemble pieces of that information. The more complete and up-to-date the information displayed on the dashboard, the more efficient the worker will be and the better informed his or her decisions will be.

Greater use of standardized formats and open architecture is substantially improving the dashboards, allowing for more customized feeds, fuller information and a more consistent look and feel to what is displayed, Sum suggests. He contends that the goal–customized dashboards for employees that show exactly what each one needs to do his or her job, no more or no less–is gradually becoming the reality. It will be the case that the CFO gets one dashboard, the cash manager gets another and the collections manager gets yet another," Sum says.

Even though it is becoming technologically feasible to get a single view of cash, some may decide that trying for the ultimate is not necessary. "Optimal cash transparency varies from company to company and depends on economics as well as technology," Sum points out. "How important is it to know that last 4% or 5% and how much will it cost to get it? At many companies, a 90% solution is considered close enough."