Why is it so hard to offer out-of-the-box reports for the essentials?
Most any treasurer can be accused of having a love-hate relationship with their treasury management system (TMS). They often love the promise of it, but hate how the promise gets delivered in the end. An increasing source of frustration, tilting these relationships in the “hate” direction is the dearth of vital reports that come from most out-of-the-box solutions.
“Why is that so hard?” one treasurer asked recently at a NeuGroup meeting. After all, there are some common reporting requirements that most every treasury has, starting with global cash positioning (by currency and entity), so it is surprising that treasury system vendors don’t provide canned report templates to satisfy these. Especially, since, with every major corporate implementation, they are asked to create them, basically from scratch.
Is there no way to offer the a report gallery that takes some of the best reports created for clients, perhaps generalized a bit, and make them available with every installation? Or, better still, might TMS vendors initiate a project to create best-practice report templates designed to support consensus best practice processes and offer these to customers (even as an add on)? This would certainly fit with the trend toward Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)—which also makes it easier to distribute ever-improving templates.
An age-old problem begging to be solved. It is not like any of these questions are new. Yet, they seem to continue to need asking. Treasurers that ask these question also must be sure they are not looking for systems to fit their current way of doing things and be receptive to reporting based on what their peers are doing. If they do not, they leave themselves open to vendors continuing to see reporting as a customization effort.
When called upon to create reports, vendors, and a few standout apparently, are able to come up with some very valuable and creative things—“if you get their attention,” as one treasurer noted. So they don’t lack for ability.
In all likelihood, the ability to offer valuable report templates—and dashboards—based on customer input and common needs will become a source of competitive advantage for TMS vendors. Those that do it well and offer good basic reports out-of-the-box will feel the love.