Over the years, the value of treasury management systems (TMS) has changed dramatically. The proposition for a TMS used to be all about time savings, improved efficiency, and better productivity. While these remain important wins for a treasury team, time savings are actually the least interesting of the benefits that a TMS offers corporate treasurers and CFOs.

What's wrong with productivity?

Saving time spent on treasury tasks is still important. Yet, time savings have no direct value in the eyes of the CFO. Even if one goes through the exercise of quantifying the value of 40+ hours that can easily be saved, it isn't like a full time headcount will be eliminated because of a TMS. There are two reasons for this:

1. Hours saved are across the entire team, so it would take a significant reworking of responsibilities to eliminate an actual person
2. Treasury is understaffed already so there is no shortage of value added tasks that a Treasurer can find for this newly found 'free time'

Because no actual costs are being eliminated, time savings ends up being a soft cost. And soft costs aren't going to make the business case for a TMS compelling enough for the CFO to urgently approve.

How is the value of a TMS measured?

The value of a treasury management system is not in what it saves — but rather in what it enables. And a TMS enables many benefits that drive a compelling ROI. Key examples include the following: