On November 7, 2024, Patrick Bert, sales and marketing director of NEOFI, was present at ATEL Tech Day, the annual meeting of treasurers of Luxembourg, where he spoke with François Masquelier, President of ATEL who told him asked three questions about the relevance of NEOFI to meeting market needs:
• Question 1: We notice that companies are looking for better-sized solutions and not necessarily “best in class” or “heavy weight” systems, which are very expensive and oversized. How does NEOFI tend to make cash management for mid-sized companies simpler and more accessible without investing too much?
Certainly, companies rarely have the human and financial resources to afford a “big and beautiful” TMS. And SaaS provides a great answer. However, despite certain qualities, SaaS quickly reaches its limits because it imposes the same thing on all its customers. But by definition, each client is different. So who should adapt?
The only answer is NEOFI! Indeed, from our very rich and very efficient technical base, you choose the functionality that you are missing without deleting your existing one, you keep your current processes that you model in NEOFI, you build your solution module by module by relying on the same base, you acquire the autonomy necessary to change the settings according to the evolution of your organization and your company.
• Question 2: What are the trends observed in terms of treasury solutions?
• Question 3: What are the major challenges that treasurers and your clients face?
Trends in treasury solutions remain unchanged in 3 categories: functional, technical and ergonomic:
1. The race for the most sophisticated additional functionality always attracts both the most keen treasurers of new things and the most expert consultants in their field;
2. The treasury solution will always need to interface with other applications, other tools, other systems, other data sources; this interfacing is a rather technical concern which the treasurer struggles to understand and for which he needs to contact his IT department. He must then submit to processes and a tempo different from his daily life. Its delivery can be found in the API… provided that the counterparty accepts it!
In addition, FinTechs often show off beautiful interfaces and new features. But do they really know how to manage and interface with what already exists? NEOFI provides the link between old and new technologies, as illustrated in the image below:
3. The race for ergonomics appeals to those most sensitive to comfort, ease and intuition. We enter a rather subjective dimension.
New entrants often ignore connectors, favoring ergonomics and functionality. Also, choosing your publisher means weighing selection criteria in these 3 orders.
The challenges our customers face are basic:
They cry in front of their static PDF reports, they suffer in Excel to rework them, they want fluid and interactive reports, configurable without requiring the editor.
If we project too quickly into the future, we forget the past: there are still many “business” applications that understand neither XML nor APIs. However, as the biggest publishers have preferred to abandon the old formats and the old protocols, the projects are irremediably slowed down, while it takes time to find converters… (see BD above…)
NEOFI helps them meet these challenges calmly!
Patrick BERT, November 7, 2024 in Luxembourg.
