Real Returns from Your Treasury Platform: A Practical Optimisation Approach

Executive Summary

Most treasury teams don’t get the full value from their systems – not for lack of effort, but because daily demands often take priority over optimisation. In fact, it’s common for companies to use less than two-thirds of their treasury platform’s functionality, which leads to inefficiencies, avoidable costs, and missed opportunities for strategic impact.

Salmon’s Customer Acceleration Programme (CAP) helps our clients close that gap. We’ve designed it to help teams unlock more from their existing tools by identifying where improvements can be made and supporting practical, sustainable change.

Through short, focused observation sessions, our team works alongside yours to understand current workflows and highlight areas for automation and optimisation. This is followed by in-depth analysis and a clear business case that shows where time and value can be gained.

Companies that take part in CAP typically see significant efficiency gains, lower costs and much better use of their systems, while building the internal capability to keep progressing.

The Treasury Optimisation Challenge

Only Using Half the Toolkit

Many treasury teams are working with powerful platforms but only using part of what’s available. Salmon’s internal research shows that most organisations tap into less than 60% of their treasury system’s features. It’s not due to a lack of ambition, but often a result of implementations running alongside other treasury projects, limited training, or the day-to-day pressure to keep things ticking over. The result is treasury departments that – through no fault of their own – operate below their potential, missing opportunities for automation, efficiency gains, and strategic value creation.

Manual Work That Shouldn’t Exist

Across many treasury teams, everyday tasks are still handled manually, from payment approvals to reconciliations and cash forecasting. These are all things that could be automated, yet they continue to consume time, introduce risk, and slow down operations. It often goes unnoticed, but the impact adds up. What seems like business as usual can erode productivity and, ultimately, profitability.

When Treasury Gets Stuck in the Weeds

Even with the right tools in place, treasury teams can struggle to move beyond their operational role. The pressure to keep things running often leaves little time or space to step back and contribute to wider business priorities. What’s lost isn’t just efficiency, it’s also the ability to provide forward-looking insight or guide risk decisions with greater accuracy and efficiency. Without making better use of the tools already available, treasury remains on the sidelines when it should be helping steer the ship.

Bringing Out the Best in Your Treasury Tech with Salmon’s CAP

Salmon’s Customer Acceleration Programme (CAP) is a practical, hands-on initiative designed to help treasury teams unlock more value from the systems and processes they already have. Rather than recommending a new system or launching a lengthy transformation project, CAP focuses on the here and now – observing how teams really work, identifying what’s holding them back, and showing how to make things run more effectively.

As well as being a tech health check., it’s a deep dive into daily operations, followed by clear recommendations, realistic business cases and a logical roadmap for improvement.

A Close-Up Look at How You Work

CAP begins with an on-site working session. Salmon’s treasury specialists spend one or two days embedded with your team, sitting alongside them to understand how your treasury function runs. This includes activities performed within the TMS and external processes conducted in Excel, other platforms, and manual workflows that impact overall treasury efficiency.

During these sessions, our specialists take detailed notes and ask comprehensive questions to understand current processes, identify pain points, and uncover opportunities for improvement. This collaborative approach ensures that solutions are practical, sustainable, and aligned with organisational culture and objectives.

Detailed Analysis and Categorisation

Following the observation sessions, Salmon's programme team conducts thorough analysis of all documented processes and inefficiencies. Each identified opportunity is carefully categorised and evaluated based on potential impact, implementation complexity, and resource requirements.

A critical component involves attributing Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) costs to each suboptimal activity. By quantifying the human resource impact of inefficient processes, CAP creates compelling financial arguments for transformation that resonate with senior management.

Presenting a Clear Business Case for Change

The final stage is where all the analysis comes together into something you can use – a clear, visual summary of findings and recommendations, tailored to your priorities and goals.

We create a professional presentation deck designed to support internal conversations and decision-making. It includes visuals that show how time is spent, what the cost impact looks like, which changes would deliver the biggest gains, and how long they would take to implement.

It’s a practical roadmap for change, grounded in your daily reality, backed by real data, and focused on achievable outcomes.

Key Programme Benefits

Higher Efficiency: Transforming Treasury Operations Through Automation

Salmon’s CAP helps treasury teams move away from time-consuming manual tasks and towards streamlined, automated workflows that actually support the wider business.

By simplifying routine processes and removing unnecessary handoffs, CAP frees up your team to focus on the work that needs their expertise, not just their availability.

Some of the most common wins include:

• Automated payment approvals: Manual routing and sign-offs are replaced with rule-based workflows that send payments to the right people instantly, cutting processing time from hours to minutes.
• Streamlined cash positioning and forecasting: Daily spreadsheet updates become a thing of the past with automated tools that give real-time visibility into liquidity.
• Automated reconciliations: Auto-matching features do the heavy lifting, slashing month-end close times by 60 to 80%.
• Dynamic reporting: Dashboards and automated reports eliminate the need for manual data pulls and formatting.

Together, these changes typically cut 40–60% of the time spent on everyday treasury tasks. That means more capacity for analysis, risk thinking and value creation — and less firefighting.

Enhanced System Utilisation: Unlocking Hidden Platform Capabilities

Most treasury management platforms contain sophisticated features and modules that remain dormant due to incomplete implementation or lack of user awareness. These dormant capabilities include advanced analytics and reporting tools with built-in business intelligence, comprehensive integration modules that connect with ERPs, banking systems, bureau services and market data providers, and powerful workflow automation for approval processes and compliance monitoring. Salmon's Customer Acceleration Programme systematically identifies and activates these underutilised capabilities, transforming existing technology investments into powerful operational assets.

Key Areas of System Enhancement:

• Advanced Analytics and Reporting: Activating built-in business intelligence tools, predictive analytics, and customisable dashboards that provide deeper insights into cash flow patterns, counterparty risk, and operational performance metrics
• Integration Capabilities: Leveraging APIs and integration modules to connect treasury systems with ERP, banking platforms, bureau services, and market data providers, creating seamless data flow
• Workflow Automation: Utilising advanced workflow engines to automate approval processes, exception handling, and compliance monitoring

These enhancements typically result in organisations discovering they can achieve 80-90% of their treasury objectives using existing platforms, avoiding costly new system implementations whilst dramatically improving operational capabilities.

Optimised Treasury Processes: Aligning Operations with Best Practices

The programme conducts comprehensive process redesign that transforms treasury operations from ad-hoc, historically-driven procedures into standardised, efficient workflows that align with industry best practices whilst maintaining compliance with regulatory requirements and internal policies.

This transformation includes creating comprehensive process documentation and standard operating procedures, implementing robust internal controls with proper segregation of roles and approval hierarchies, establishing key performance indicators for continuous monitoring, designing systematic exception management approaches, and embedding regulatory compliance requirements directly into operational workflows.

Process Optimisation Components:

• Standardisation and Documentation: Creating comprehensive process documentation, standard operating procedures, and workflow maps that ensure consistent execution
• Control Framework Enhancement: Implementing robust internal controls that balance operational efficiency with risk management, ensuring segregation of duties and appropriate approval hierarchies
• Performance Metrics Implementation: Establishing key performance indicators (KPIs) that enable continuous monitoring and improvement of treasury operations
• Exception Management: Designing systematic approaches for handling exceptions, errors, and unusual transactions

These process improvements typically result in 50-70% reduction in operational errors, improved regulatory compliance scores, and enhanced ability to scale operations.

Lower Costs Through Platform Migration: Strategic Consolidation Benefits

As treasury systems evolve, many companies end up with overlapping tools, fragmented setups and vendor relationships, not to mention multiple licences – all costing more than they need to. Salmon’s CAP helps identify where consolidation can deliver real savings, particularly through strategic migration to the Salmon Treasurer platform, eliminating system redundancies and optimising licensing arrangements whilst improving operational capabilities.

Rather than layering new tools onto old ones, this approach simplifies your tech stack, reduces overhead and strengthens overall performance.

Cost Reduction Opportunities:

• Licence Consolidation: Eliminating multiple treasury system licences by consolidating operations onto a single, comprehensive platform, typically reducing annual licensing costs by 20-40% for Salmon clients
• Infrastructure Savings: Reducing IT infrastructure requirements, maintenance costs, and support overhead
• Training and Support Efficiency: Minimising training costs and support complexity by standardising on a single platform
• Operational Efficiency: Achieving cost savings through improved straight-through processing rates and enhanced automation capabilities

Organisations typically achieve 25-40% reduction in total cost of ownership for treasury technology whilst simultaneously improving operational capabilities and system reliability.

Comprehensive System Training: Building Sustainable Internal Expertise

Change doesn’t last if the knowledge stays with the consultants. That’s why a core part of the Customer Acceleration Programme is focused on building the internal skills your team needs to keep improving long after the project ends.

The training isn’t one-size-fits-all. It’s practical, tailored to your platform setup, and focused on giving your team the confidence to make changes independently. From system administration to process optimisation, we equip your treasury with the tools to keep the momentum going.

Training Programme Elements:

• Technical Proficiency Development: Providing hands-on training in advanced system features, configuration options, and troubleshooting techniques
• Strategic Treasury Management: Educating teams on modern treasury management concepts, risk management strategies, and industry best practices
• Process Improvement Methodologies: Teaching internal teams to identify optimisation opportunities and implement changes using structured methodologies

Organisations completing the training programme report 90%+ retention of optimisation benefits after programme completion and demonstrate ability to implement additional improvements independently.

Transformative Business Impact

Strategic Treasury Function Evolution

Organisations that go through the CAP often see their treasury function shift from a reactive cost centre to a proactive business partner. With better systems and processes in place, treasury teams can deliver sharper insights, support smarter decision-making and contribute more directly to financial performance.

Measurable Return on Investment

Salmon's programme consistently delivers compelling return on investment through cost savings, efficiency gains, and enhanced operational capabilities. Organisations typically achieve cost savings that exceed programme investment within the first year, with ongoing benefits that compound over time.

Future-Ready Treasury Operations

By optimising current systems and building internal capabilities, Salmon's programme ensures that treasury operations are positioned for future growth and evolving business needs. Organisations develop the flexibility and expertise necessary to adapt to changing market conditions and business requirements.

Unlocking Treasury Excellence

Salmon's Customer Acceleration Programme delivers transformative results through expert collaboration and proven methodologies that maximise the value of existing treasury system investments. By combining intensive operational assessment with strategic analysis and compelling business case development, Salmon's programme creates win-win outcomes for both Salmon and its clients.

Organisations taking part in this initiative typically see meaningful improvements across their treasury function – from sharper system usage and lower operating costs to smoother processes and stronger in-house capabilities. These changes deliver almost immediate wins but also lay the foundation for sustained performance and continuous improvement.

At the same time, Salmon gains deeper insight into each client’s unique operational environment, helping to build stronger relationships and unlock opportunities for long-term collaboration and shared success.

With typical cost savings of 20-40% on technology licensing alone and operational efficiency improvements of 40-60%, Salmon's clients save on average €80,000 per year through the Customer Acceleration Programme. This provides compelling return on investment whilst positioning treasury operations as strategic assets that drive measurable value and competitive advantage.

By combining specialised expertise with proven assessment methodologies, Salmon's Customer Acceleration Programme ensures that treasury operations not only meet current requirements but are positioned for future growth and evolving business needs. The result is a treasury function that operates as a strategic asset, delivering measurable value to the organisation whilst maintaining the highest standards of efficiency and effectiveness.

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* Salmon proprietary data