Cash Management
The value of Cash in circulation and the number of payments made will continue to grow within the UK despite the growth of credit card payments.
Cash in circulation in the UK in 2004 grew by 7.3% (£32.7 Billion in 2003 to £35.1 Billion in 2004 - well above inflation). ATM transactions grew by 8% (£2.3 Billion to £2.5 Billion). Whatever SEPA (Single European Payments Area) may bring, the residual cash in circulation will continue to grow.
Managing, collecting and moving cash from stores to the bank remains a major headache. People still like to use cash - lots of it, regularly.
Believing that cash will "go away" and be superseded by cards, or other means of payment, or that the "War on Cash" will actually eradicate cash will simply not happen.
Cash remains King despite the move to alternative forms of payment and the Narrow Money Supply (hard cash) continues to grow year on year.
Nemea Consulting has recognised expertise and has delivered a cash management solution for major high street banks, retailers and CIT companies. Our consultants provide the strategic thinking to make cash more efficient and manage the project directly.
To support them, we have a teaming arrangement with Accenture and Carreker both of whom are leading financial global businesses.
Our Solution
This is split into 2 phases. Phase One is a 'Discovery' phase which looks at all aspects of the cash management end to end process. The timescales to deliver this is short and the outcome is a recommendation on which key areas, within the overall process, should be focused upon.
The use of the Phase One will establish a 360 degree understanding of the Cash management cycle within the business. This is an initial (not exhaustive) list of key areas that we would review:
- Development of a high level understanding of ‘AS IS’ process and methods
- Review current systems on managing cash
- Review the reconciliation processes together with errors and discrepancies
- Review of the suppliers within the current Cash Management cycle
- Review the amount of cash being held over the week-end
Phase Two is the implementation which will put into action those agreed processes from Phase One.
Using supply chain management principles for Cash Management solutions
Nemea’s heritage of delivering world class supply chain management solutions means that we can adapt best practice principles in the logistics and retail industries to re-engineer financial and cash management solutions. In this way, Financial services organisations are able to turn cash from a headache into a real competitive asset.
Nemea’s experience with clients has shown that world class end-to-end cash management can allow more space in branches or stores to be utilised as prime retail space, minimising the areas devoted to administration and secure cash handling, and freeing up staff to focus on customer facing, revenue-generating activities.
However, a world-class cash supply chain also does much more. It ensures that cash to branches, stores, ATM’S and business clients is fully optimised, with cash delivered “just in time" – exactly when and where needed.