Entering a dark room without knowing where the light switch is can be disorienting. It slows you down, leads to missteps, and may even cause harm. Once the light is found, the immediate thought is often, “I wish I had known this sooner.”

Forecasting cash flow without real-time data is much the same. Treasury teams face significant challenges in making multi-million dollar decisions when information:

• is fragmented across banks, payment processors, and internal systems
• Is already stale by the time it’s consolidated
• remains siloed with limited access
• costs time and money to access
• creates delays

Effective decision-making requires real-time context. Without it, treasury teams operate with blind spots that prevent proactive liquidity management and force reactive and less efficient capital allocation.

The Cost of Fragmentation

As an overview of the problem shared over a four-part series:

• Data fragmentation creates significant inefficiencies across the traditional financial system.
• Managing global cash flows costs enterprises millions of dollars in hidden fees.
• Treasury teams can struggle to optimally balance yield with liquidity.

These challenges are compounded by forecasting difficulties. Without real-time data, treasury teams find it challenging to accurately anticipate future liquidity needs. This lack of visibility results in strategic blindness where decisions are made on incomplete or outdated information, potentially leading to weaker treasury performance.

Treasury’s Growing focus on Liquidity

Treasury teams recognize the urgent need to address liquidity issues. In Deloitte’s 2024 Global Corporate Treasury Survey, the report authors note how respondents, almost unanimously, consider “liquidity risk management and being a steward for financial risk management as critical mandates” and recognize the need for better visibility into global operations. Most of the organizations therefore plan a 2025 focus on improved cash forecasting and boosted operational efficiency. Statistically, the top five challenges named are:

• 58%: visibility into global operations, cash, and financial exposures
• 48%: digital capabilities
• 47%: liquidity
• 44%: inadequate treasury systems infrastructure
• 39%: FX volatility

The top five priorities for organizations are to:

• 62%: enhance liquidity management
• 46%: improve cash forecasting capabilities
• 35%: optimize capital structure
• 31%: improve operational efficiency
• 30%: mitigate market risk

The report shows how treasury departments are serving as major driving forces within organizations, taking on the tough job of managing liquidity risks while strategically improving capital allocation—even when one hand is figuratively tied behind their backs.

These teams emphasize the need for more visibility into cash flow forecasting and aren’t satisfied with their current capacities. Only 18 percent of respondents believe that their forecasting is above average with 38% ranking their capabilities as below average or needing further development. Presumably that leaves nearly half of the treasury teams seeing their forecasting as average, typical for their industries.

Today’s advanced technologies can help to solve these problems.

Seeking Enterprise Technology Solutions

As a final question from the Deloitte report, companies list the most important benefit when adopting technologies:

• 35%: automation of manual processes
• 18%: risk mitigation (e.g., fewer human errors, enhanced security, increased controls)
• 15%: visibility and increased reporting capabilities
• 14%: 24-hour performance, speed, quality, and operational efficiency
• 9%: scalability to support growth
• 3%: cost reductions for current processes
• 1% more satisfied employees due to less repetitive work

Five percent of those surveyed do not have a treasury technology solution so did not select a top benefit.

A unified data record model can address all of these challenges. With a unified data record model, enterprises gain real-time visibility into each transaction while reducing risk. This transparency allows treasury teams to act proactively and make more strategic decisions.

A unified data system gives companies a clear view across global operations around the clock. Automated reporting replaces manual cash flow forecasting with reliable, real-time insights. This foundation helps reduce fragmentation, lower costs, improve yield, and appropriately scale with employees appreciating less repetitive work.

Turning on the Light Switch With Stablecoin Issuance

When grappling to get access to data across networks causes big problems, owning the network and, therefore, the data, provides the solution.

When enterprises own both the network and the data, they gain access to near real-time information. Treasury teams can then manage liquidity and allocate capital more effectively for higher returns.

Bastion provides the technology to make this possible—built with compliance and sound investment strategies at its core.