By Antony Michels
Company is highlighting innovations that work for all seven of ION’s treasury management systems.
In the latest example of its cross-product, multi-brand strategy, this month ION Treasury is launching a cash forecasting solution powered by machine learning for its Reval and ITS treasury clients. ION says the strategy is to build solutions like this once and deploy them to all of its treasury brands, including Wallstreet Suite, Treasura, IT2, Openlink and City Financials.
Cross-product solutions. The cash forecasting solution fits into ION’s road map of introducing innovations across its TMS portfolio, a strategy the company has actively shared with customers at a series of client meetings across the globe this year. The meetings—following a string of acquisitions that initially concerned some clients—are part of the company’s “unification” effort, ION Treasury CEO Rich Grossi said in a recent interview with NeuGroup Insights.
- “The big message to our customers is our strategy will continue to focus on product innovation within each of our solutions, but we will also provide greater value from the larger portfolio of ION solutions,” Mr. Grossi said. “At our conference, we launched several cross-platform solutions as a proof point of our strategy. Overall, I believe our customers understood the vision and saw great benefit in our new offerings.”
Reassuring clients. Anecdotal feedback suggests ION’s message is resonating, at least with some clients. Several NeuGroup members who are users of Reval and other ION systems say they learned important details at the client events about ION’s game plan after a period of relative silence and personnel disruptions as the company acquired and absorbed more TMS providers.
- One NeuGroup member who did not like the company’s lack of communication following acquisitions spoke positively about the event she attended. “During the user conference, they laid out a well-thought-out strategy that was the first time we’ve ever really heard their strategy, and it all really made sense.”
Investing, not acquiring. “They specifically talked about how they are all done acquiring their core systems,” the member said in explaining her takeaways from the conference. “Their strategy now is to invest across products through ancillary solutions that can lay over these core solutions. Like bank connectivity, bank fee analysis, bank account management, money market fund portals, machine learning, mobile access. So that was encouraging.”
- In October, ION announced the rollout of a bank fee analysis tool, part of its bank account management solution called IBAM. Looking ahead, Mr. Grossi said the company plans to introduce cross-product solutions involving clients’ connections to banks as well as other tools that make use of artificial intelligence and machine learning. All will ultimately be available to each TMS brand.
Client communication portal. As a final example of the company’s evolution and unification, Mr. Grossi described an online client communication portal for all ION users. “This tool allows clients to connect to receive updates on their software, to view road maps, to share our knowledge with other ION Treasury community users, to get information around the software, to report issues, to get documentation, to do some self-service. A really powerful tool that is exposed now to our larger community and not just a specific customer within.”
The road ahead. More than one NeuGroup member said while they liked what they heard, the jury is still out on the execution of the plan. One such member is eager to hear more about ION’s connectivity solutions. “I really want to see them do something around connectivity. That space is changing so quickly now. There’s definitely more solutions coming in that space through APIs. I’d really like to see that really be an area they invest in. That could be very transformative.”
- Mr. Grossi says the company is listening closely to what clients want and partnering with them to make those solutions a reality. “We have a really powerful opportunity to advance our solutions. There is work to do, but I think this year was a real inflection point for us as it relates to not only communicating but demonstrating where we want to be from a from a solution provider point of view.”