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Your ACH Transaction Was Rejected

Phishing Warning: Over the past few days there have been many emails coming out trying to get people to go to a purported ACH or NACHA site. They contain a link that directs you to a Phishing site - which appears to go to nacha.org. This seems to show that the Phishers (or perhaps they are simply trying to load a virus - we didn't go to the site for obvious reasons )- are doing some more homework. This is evidenced by:

• Reasonable language (in english) - even though there are some technical errors that non-Treasury people wouldn't catch. They seem to be spending more time doing their homework.
  
• NACHA Information In the Email Source Description. These emails include sources such as
  
• • Electronic Payments Association
  • NACHA.org
  • Automated Clearing House (ACH) Network

Please, be careful. These are not real notifications.

*******

Dear bank account holder, The ACH transaction, recently initiated from your bank account (by you or any other person), was rejected by the Electronic Payments Association. Please review the transaction report by clicking the link below:

LINK NOT SHOWN

Copyright ©2009 by NACHA - The Electronic Payments Association

AFP 2009 New Technology Tidbits

Just back from the AFP and debriefing with our team about the conference events and tech tidbits we picked up. Seeing the City of Los Angeles win both the Strategy category and the Overall Pinnacle Award (the first government entity to do so) was impressive.

Here are five select technology tidbits worth mentioning. We may expand on these later, but this list will do for now:

• 1. IDENTRUST now offers a Bank Account Management solution.
• 2. SWIFT hit 512 Corporate users in their SCORE offering at the end of the 3rd quarter.
• 3. CITY FINANCIALS (TWS vendor) exhibited at the AFP and has a US based sales person now. While their total customer base is still under 100, it is interesting to see another workstation vendor enter the US market.
• 4. CALYPSO is now offering a TWS that they just acquired. Four Silicon Valley customers use this offering. This is another new entrant.
• 5. SUNGARD has their TWS SaaS offering fully marketed now and has renamed it (now that my book that was just published is out) from AvantGard Treasury On Demand to AvantGard Treasury XE. The XE stands for express edition.

There were many other tidbits as well as major strategy shifts gleaned from discussions. But, this is all I'll blog on from my BlackBerry.

-caj

What Will it Take to Get MORE Corporates on SWIFT?

In her video interview with GTNews (link below) on 16 September, Marilyn Spearing from Deutsche Bank asked the question, “What will it take to move the acceptance of SWIFT corporate access from the current 500-or-so corporates to the 20,000 corporates seen as the addressable market?”  Additionally she asked, “What is the value add that is going to make this attractive as SWIFT moves from the Multi-National to the Mid-Cap space?”  See the interview here http://www.gtnews.com/feature/378.cfm

Here are some of our views. Add your thoughts to the comments.

 

1. Untangle the mess of permissions and paperwork.

-Provide clear guidance, by bank, about the process, paperwork and time required to get a corporate live for SWIFT.

-Allow the banks to post the documents required for activation of SWIFT services on the SWIFT website.

2. Continue to educate corporate treasurers.

- Provide clearer guidance toward qualified consultants who can enable the treasury staff to navigate the technical requirements and middleware required to make SWIFT interact with ERP and Treasury systems.

-Add granularity to the onboarding steps and timeline.  Despite the advances in the SWIFT website and message, clarification is still needed for the corporate treasurer to be able to understand what steps to take next if they think their company is a good fit for SWIFT.

3. Create a demo or video.

- Show how a corporate might use SWIFT Alliance Lite.  What does the interface look like?  How does it interact with other software? Until now the only picture we can see is the USB memory stick.  The concept is exciting, but the marketing doesn’t sell.

4. Convince banks to prefer SWIFT connectivity over other channels.

-  Independently, banks continue to say SWIFT is a collaborative vice a competitive space.  Aside from announcements, we just haven’t seen this practically applied.

5. Develop an onboard team concept.

-When a corporate customer comes to SWIFT, or the bank, asking for SWIFT connectivity, the bank representative, SWIFT representative, and client would all discuss the needs and expectations of the client together.

-This process should be repeatable with the same SWIFT representative across each bank that the client wants to connect to.  If SWIFT were leading this, it would be much easier for the client to find the right contact at the bank. 

We understand SWIFT Corporate Access is not for every company, but, in our opinion, it should move more rapidly into the larger market. These concepts could certainly help the process. What ideas do you have to increase the use of this great pipe?

-rdt

Do You Speak Client?

I have often found that Gary Larson’s Far Side cartoons succinctly capture the problems with communication. The cartoon that says “What we say to dogs” and “What they hear” is one of my favorites. In that cartoon you see the man telling the dog Ginger to stay out of the garbage or else, what the dog hears is “blah blah blah blah Ginger blah blah blah Ginger.” To see it on the web, use this link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/apotheker/10830160/

 

In the treasury world we have seen a great disconnect in what Banks, Technology Vendors, and Corporates say to each other and what the other hears:

·  A corporate asks for functionality; the vendor delivers complexity.

·  Another corporate asks for an easier way to manage accounts; the bank delivers a website that requires 2 weeks of training, has 3 forms of identification required, and does not support work flow.

·  A Technology Vendor says that implementation requires 3 weeks of the Corporate’s time; the corporate hears that they can implement the technology in 3 weeks while still doing their full time job.

·  A bank says that their product will ease reconciliation; the Corporate hears that the product will do reconciliation.

 

As consultants we have seen many times when people inside their own firms have had this same problem. IT, Finance, Treasury and Sales all have languages and meanings of their own inside of Vendors, Banks, and Corporates.

 

You hear what the others are saying, but do you understand?  Can you afford not to?

 

Some techniques to help:

 

Vendors/Banks:

·  Spend time learning the processes and procedures that your products will impact at the client, not just generically, but specifically at each client. This is the client lens.

·  Determine the client’s real goals for the next few years and determine how your product(s) fit. This is what it means to have a solution.

·  Help the client identify the real future needs based on these goals. Again, how do(es) your product(s) and their development pipeline fit with the client’s needs?

 

Corporates:

·  Define your processes, procedures and current technology by documenting where information comes from, how it flows through the systems, what decisions it supports, how it is used by other departments and when it is required. Someone will need to pay attention to the format, how it is transmitted, when it is transmitted and who controls or owns the transmission and data.

·  Clearly identify the company and departmental goals for the immediate (2-3-year) and 5-year horizons. Articulate how you intend to use technology to achieve this, and create a document defining your critical needs.  Share this document with your bank and technology vendors.  Evaluate them on how well they understand and help you meet these stated needs.

·  Meet with IT, Accounting, and any other departments that you support—or who support you. This includes upstream and downstream 'customers'  Identify how changing technology or technology transmission methods will impact them.  Discuss timelines, expectations, and other users of the information.

 

This won’t eliminate all of the crossed messages and problems, but it will help keep Ginger out of the garbage!

-rdt

Four Factors Changing the Software as a Service (SaaS) Landscape: Four Point About Maturity

Having an application hosted outside of your organization's data center is not a new concept. But, of late there is is widespread acceptance of it from the information technology crowd. We were delighted to see his comments from a panel discussion at the InformationWeek 500 conference.

Read the blog form Chris Murphy, the Editor of Information week at the (read here -->) global cio blog

Here are his four points (you'll want to read his entire succinct blog entry).

1. Board of Director's Support. No longer will an job-protecting IT person be able to stop the use of SaaS for no coherent and real argument.
2. New Product Categories. The integration discussion is worth pondering. It has implications for the best-of-breed versus integrated solution debates.
3. Attitudes about 'on-premises' are changing. This shows that the long-standing IT maxim of build strategic, buy tactical is sinking in to some of the beloved propeller heads among us.
4. The Recession has helped SaaS. I think those of us in Treasury have heard the points about speed of implementation, capital expense and training reduction more than enough times by those selling their solutions via the SaaS model. Just because they say it too often, doesn't invalidate their argument.

This development (IT leaders recognizing the value of SaaS) is a good thing for technologists - and a very useful situation for those in Treasury looking to bring in some new/good technology. This unequivocally places the burden of proof on denying the use of SaaS on the naysayer. For many situations in Treasury where an installed solution offering and a hosted solution are offered, the person wanting to have the hardware and software in house has to prove that position beyond a reasonable doubt.

We feel this further validates our position since 2006 when we stated that 'no one should buy a cash TWS that is client-server'.

-c