How do treasuries take full advantage of their cloud applications?

Ali Curi: Treasury ConversatION is an ION podcast where we discuss topics of importance with CFOs, group treasurers, and treasurers. Join us as we explore critical topics with industry leaders, product owners, and subject matter experts, providing insights and strategies tailored to the dynamic world of treasury management.

Hi everyone, and welcome to Treasury ConversatION. I’m Ali Curi. On today’s episode, Mark Tirschwell, ION CIO will discuss the world of corporate treasuries. And explore how they’re leveraging cloud technology to transform their financial operations. Mark will share some insight on the numerous ways that cloud platforms are helping treasuries improve their real time cash visibility, automate routine processes, enhance risk management, and ensure compliance with evolving regulations.

I will also chat with Mark about future trends and how they could change the way treasuries operate.

Let’s get started.

Mark Tirshwell, welcome to the podcast.

Mark Tirschwell: Thanks, Ali. Very excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Ali Curi: Mark, before we get to our conversation, tell us about your exciting background and what is your role and responsibilities at ION?

Mark Tirschwell: I have a long background. I’ll try and be brief. I started as a developer. I built the original Wall Street FX system before becoming the Chief Technology Officer for Wall Street Systems, and then the, the CIO for ION when ION acquired Wall Street Systems. I’ve had a number of different roles since then, CEO of TriplePoint Technologies, and then subsequently back to Group CIO role.

And I also run our cloud business and have been running our cloud business since I started it in 2007.

Ali Curi: Great. Thank you, Mark. Let’s dive right in. Why are corporate treasuries adopting cloud solutions in the first place? Because this is something that’s been talked about before. I figure that there’s several components that go into the implementation.
But before we get to those, Why don’t you give us a high level overview of why cloud technology is becoming essential in treasury management?

Mark Tirschwell: Let’s expand the view a little bit, Ali. It’s not really about corporate treasuries adopting cloud solutions. It’s much more about companies adopting cloud solutions across the board for all their critical applications.

It’s a transition that, as you know, has been happening for the last 10 years and continues to accelerate at faster and faster rates.

Ali Curi: Right, so then how does the automation part play into the cloud?

Mark Tirschwell: In the cloud, you have many options for automation, especially around the use of dynamically scalable infrastructure, the ability to leverage cloud native technologies, all of which can foster the use of automation.

So you have automation around infrastructure. And specific technologies within the cloud, which are designed to lessen the need for IT staff and others to manage things when you’re in the cloud.

Ali Curi: Now you mentioned how cloud applications help automate routine tasks for treasury teams. Take us through the day-to-day operations.
What does that look like?

Mark Tirschwell: Again, the question needs to be a little bit reframed to be purely about automation, because the cloud doesn’t by itself play a role here. Automation within a treasury system allows companies to reduce complexity, reduce the workload on staff, so they can focus on more important activities and make the treasury process much more efficient.

That’s really where automating routine tasks kicks in. It’s really within the application itself.

Ali Curi: I see. So, risk management is always top of mind. How do cloud platforms help treasurers manage risks, especially when it comes to regulatory compliance and market fluctuations?

Mark Tirschwell: Well, this is a very important topic and it’s a great question.

Thanks for asking it, Ali. Compliance is a crucial topic. Most companies, especially those that are publicly traded, have very specific requirements with respect to handling and securing and management of their financial information. When you look at regulatory compliance, it is a critical part of any solution where financial information is outsourced. So it’s really, really important. It’s a great question. And I’ll probably talk about it some more as we go through.

Ali Curi: When organizations are expanding globally, what are some factors to consider? This is largely what the cloud was made for, right? I mean, cloud application supports scalability.
So share with us some advantages that they offer, compared to traditional systems.

Mark Tirschwell: The cloud was built for global organizations and scalability. That’s not saying that it doesn’t apply to local organizations, but it has designs for global organizations so that no matter where your users are, the cloud can scale locally or globally to accommodate them.

In addition, the management of a global cloud solution is much simpler when deployed correctly. And when I talk about being deployed correctly, this is another key aspect, right? It’s important that companies understand how the treasury solutions are deployed in the cloud. What makes them better, more scalable, more secure, and that they’re deployed correctly.
It’s really, really important to make sure that you understand all of those aspects.

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Ali Curi: Let’s talk about security, because as companies scale, they also face growing concerns about data security.
So what measures do cloud providers typically offer to ensure that sensitive financial data remains secure and protected?

Mark Tirschwell: Security is the most important aspect of adopting any cloud-based solution. Companies need to make sure they do their due diligence on the provider to make sure their cybersecurity is at the highest level.

And that they have the proper cyber insurance. In addition, companies should know how the cloud provider is going to recover should a ransomware attack occur. Operational resiliency, business continuity, disaster tolerance, mutable backups are all key factors that should be considered when selecting a treasury cloud provider.
And I’ll just expand it again. It’s not limited to just a treasury solution. These are key factors that should be considered when deploying any cloud solution.

Ali Curi: Yeah, right, that makes sense. Mark, security is very important. How does integration fit in? What advantages does cloud technology have? And how does it integrate with other systems or fintech platforms?

Mark Tirschwell: The cloud facilitates interconnectivity between many external systems and in most cases for large integration partners. So well-known other cloud providers of software like SAP or salesforce.com or NetSuite, or any of those organizations there are already built in adapters and connectivity, which can ease the connectivity and the integration between those various platforms.

So overall, the cloud makes integration efforts much more efficient because you get to use something that already exists. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. And again, that saves you deployment time and it also saves you operational time because you don’t have to manage those things going forward.

And they should all be backward compatible as you upgrade and as those vendors upgrade as well.

Ali Curi: Well, great. I appreciate everything you’ve shared with us. Now, looking ahead, what future trends do you see shaping how treasuries will continue to leverage cloud technologies? Are there any emerging innovations that treasurers should keep an eye on?

Mark Tirschwell: The focus going forward should really be aligned to protecting data and systems. And it’s what I talked about before. I mean, making sure that whomever’s providing the treasury solution in the cloud has the proper technologies, controls, operational controls, to recover in the event of some catastrophic event.

When I talk about catastrophic events, the one that comes to mind most often with almost every organization is a ransomware attack. How are you going to recover from a ransomware attack, right? And you need to make sure that the provider has the appropriate protections and recoverability to be able to do something like that.

One of the important things to consider when you’re working with a treasury cloud provider is where do you rank with respect to other customers? So if a treasury cloud provider has a thousand customers and they have a ransomware attack, where are you in the list of a thousand customers when you’re thinking about how quickly am I going to get my system back up and my data recovered?

So all important things to consider.

Ali Curi: Well, thank you for that. Mark, to round things out, what is the one big thing you hope listeners will take away from this episode?

Mark Tirschwell: The one thing I hope people take away is that an organization, again, really needs to do their due diligence on a provider to make sure they have more than adequate protections in place.

I can’t stress it enough, there’s a concept in the world called “Shadow IT,” where people in an organization sign up for some cloud service or something without their company actually knowing. This is one of those places where you need to understand everything that’s going on, who’s connecting from where, how they’re connecting, what the encryption looks like, again, what the recoverability looks like, and all of those types of things. You need to look at their certifications that they have. Do they have SOC audits? Do they have ISO 27001 certifications, right? Do they have all these security audits in place where an independent third party takes a look at what that company’s doing and independently validates that they are doing what they say they’re doing.

Very important.

Ali Curi: Great. Thank you. And now let’s have a quick sidebar. Talk about some career advice. What is some advice you wish you had heard earlier in your career?

Mark Tirschwell: You know, it’s an interesting question. I don’t know that it’s about something that I had heard earlier in career. What I tell people today, and I speak with lots of people, I interview lots of people, and I try and help people further, what they’re doing in their career and how they’re advancing their career. I tell people that the best thing that you can do is to be a self starter, really be motivated, really come across as somebody that wants to help the company succeed in whatever the particular role that they’re applying for. It’s really, really important.

If you sit back and you’re a passive candidate, you’re not going to get anywhere, right? You need to be aggressive, you need to be out there, you need to be diligent, you need to pay attention to detail. Super important, paying attention to detail in what you do and how you do it.

You need to be conscientious, you need to be there, and you need to be responsive. One of the things that I tell people is if you get an email and you don’t respond for a day, you might as well not even send a response. All you’re doing is making the other person frustrated because it took you so long to respond.
Being responsive is a key aspect of being an employee that’s on the fast track.

Ali Curi: I think that’s some great advice. Mark Tirshwell, thank you for joining us today. I hope you visit us again.

Mark Tirschwell: Thank you for having me, Ali.

Ali Curi: And that’s our episode for today. You can follow ION Treasury on X and on LinkedIn.

Thank you for joining us.