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Treasury transformation

How Deloitte helped a major energy company to establish a flagship treasury function

A visionary CFO creates a world-class African corporate treasury function

Our client was beset with time-consuming manual processes, no cash visibility, a lack of governance, a disjointed treasury function and no effective cash management. Not having treasury systems that were fit-for-purpose only made it worse. In addition, personnel at all levels did not understand the purpose of the treasury function, how it should be structured and governed.

The CFO grabbed the opportunity to create an outstanding treasury function and brought the Deloitte Financial Services Advisory division on board as its partner in this journey. 

Deloitte tapped into its treasury transformation expertise across multiple geographies to deliver results on this project. A collaboration was established between Deloitte South Africa, the local Deloitte client team and the international project funders.

This multifaceted project began with a detailed gap analysis of the current treasury function against industry best practice. From there, we worked closely with the client over several years to:

· Craft a treasury policy and establish a treasury committee.
· Create role profiles for the treasury function that ensures separation of duties.
· Provide training to the treasury team and committee members in effective treasury practices and governance.
· Define clear treasury system requirements, draft an RFP (request for proposal), facilitate the selection of a suitable vendor and support the system implementation.
· Facilitate an end-to-end bank RFP to ensure the company achieves the best pricing and service from their local banks.

“A strong treasury function improves an organisation’s profitability while reducing risk. It pays for itself multiple times over.”

- Monique de Waal, Director, Deloitte Africa

Design and implement a liquidity structure that enables the most efficient deployment of cash.

One of the most critical aspects of this multi-year engagement was effective change management. This was an organisation that had become comfortable doing things the same way decade after decade. In addition, moving to centralised cash management would be politically tricky. The CFO therefore requested our support with managing this substantial change.

As part of the change management process, Deloitte supported the CFO with national roadshows, facilitated conversations with all affected personnel, ensured that all concerns were addressed and clarified the benefits of the new way of work to all. Buy-in from all regional stakeholders was critical to this transformation’s success.

“We have been a market-leader in the Africa region, bringing global best practice in Treasury Management standards to the local markets and leveraging off our team’s global expertise. We continue to lead the way across the continent in bringing both management and technology solutions to clients.”

Monique de Waal, Director, Deloitte Africa

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