Citi Perspectives Fall 2023: Transforming Treasury

Jacky Lo Chief Financial Officer, GoTo Group Rania Ali Group Treasurer, GoTo Group | 39 we have focused on ensuring that we have the right skills and processes to drive the outcomes we need as a business. Q. As you look ahead, what are GoTo Group’s distinctive challenges and opportunities? And how is treasury supporting the business in these areas? A. E-Commerce and the wider digital ecosystem is very dynamic, and businesses such as GoTo have to be agile in responding to opportunities to build market share, create new customer pathways, and expand into newmarket segments. Treasury plays a key role in facilitating the digital ecosystem by ensuring efficient, secure and rapid payments and collections, and optimizing working capital and liquidity. By doing so, we help the group in its aims to minimize supply friction and provide customers with an excellent, end-to-end experience. We need the right tools in treasury to do this, such as accurate, timely cash flow forecasting, secure, rapid payments and collections, and reliable risk information to help inform our business expansion plans. Robust systems and infrastructure are key to achieving this, including secure, real-time connectivity between our ERP and the bank’s systems. With these tools and solutions in place, we can better manage day-to-day liquidity requirements, reduce the level of liquidity buffer across the group and optimize yield on excess cash. To meet the ongoing, and rapidly changing needs of the business, treasury is keen to understand the potential for new innovations. For example, our advisory project highlighted the potential benefit of expanding our use of Citi’s Virtual Cards Account “VCA” (i.e., virtual corporate credit card) to improve working capital through extended payment terms. We are implementing VCA for internal procurement in our Tokopedia business, and we are considering expanding the use of the solution to pay for digital advertising and cloud services. Q. Based on your experience, what would your advice be to other CFOs and treasurers of fast-growing digital companies? A. The pandemic challenged GoTo across businesses and processes but most importantly it accelerated the digital journey, especially for treasury. We found that taking Citi’s Treasury Diagnostic survey as a treasury health check was a great starting point to treasury transformation, and helps to establish priorities. As we transition into a rising interest regime with economic uncertainty, priorities such as profitable growth, prudent working capital and cash management are front and center for corporate treasuries. Moreover, as operating models evolve to help businesses provide a great customer experience while continuing on the path of profitability, treasurers and CFOs need to play a greater role in advising on, and execution of business strategy with digital tools and data capabilities. Industry spotlight: HowGoTo Groupmanaged a blockbuster merger and the world’s largest tech IPO