To gain a better understanding of the complexities andinefficiencies inherent in modern “treasury onboarding,” TreasuryStrategies recently undertook a survey, commissioned by WAUSAUFinancial Systems, a vendor of solutions for payments andreceivables processing. The survey gauged the opinions of bothbanks and corporate users of banking services about the processthrough which banks sell and then implement new services forcorporate clients. Corporate treasurers may not be surprised tolearn that the businesses outside the financial services sector seemore problems with the process than do their banks.

Treasury Strategies asked the corporate respondents howfrequently they face issues such as a lack of visibility into theimplementation process, unnecessarily long or inefficientimplementations, and poor communication with the bank. “All ofthose problems were rated above a 3 out of 5, with 5 meaning 'veryoften,'” says Chris Zegal, vice president of marketing at WAUSAU.“An issue rated 3 probably occurs fairly often.” The averagefrequency rating that large companies assigned to the problem oflacking a clear view into the implementation's status was 3.8, andthese organizations experience communication problems at afrequency of 3.5 (see Figure 1). “Since all of these are ratedabove a 3, the companies probably have some sort of challenge inevery implementation. It seems like problems are the norm ratherthan the exception,” Zegal adds.

Survey respondents who work for banks gave these issuesconsiderably lower frequency ratings than did the corporaterespondents. For example, large banks scored “customer isdissatisfied with communication” at 2.5, compared with the 3.5 thatcompanies gave “poor communication with bank.” As Zegal interpretsthis result: “The banks know they have these challenges, but theydon't think they happen as frequently as the corporations thinkthey do.”