SAAS Treasury Management Solutions the In’s and Out’s

A new digital revolution is upon us and by now you have probably heard, its name is the cloud. In actuality, the cloud is not all that new and in the past, it had limited applications, but as we fast forward to 2014 the cloud as taken a hold of our personal and professional lives. What a pleasure it is to be able to access all of our information (securely) from anywhere that has an internet connection. Our purpose today is to explore a Cloud-Based Treasury Management Solution (Cloud-Based TMS) also known as SaaS Based Treasury Management Solution (SaaS Based TMS). When this is posed to treasury professionals, there are two questions that always come up; how secure is a cloud-based treasury solution and how are updates on a cloud-based solution handled. Let’s start off by saying that a cloud-based treasury solution is as secure as a standalone treasury system with access and update conveniences that only a cloud-based solution can provide.

Over the last year, the security and integrity of the internet have been questioned. We have heard of stories from Edward Snowden as well as the threat from the heart bleed security flaw, making security a top priority for treasury professionals and the IT staff that support them. Let us dive into the different types of clouds. There are Public clouds; Hybrid clouds; and Private clouds. As to not cause any confusion, only the first types of clouds will be discussed. Public clouds are designed to be cost-efficient with ease of ownership and scalability. Hybrid clouds are designed around scalability and security. The hybrid cloud is held to higher standards. At Axletree, for example, our cloud is run from a tier 3 data center and has passed an SSAE 16 audit as well as a SWIFT audit. To connect to a hybrid-cloud, a secured Virtual Private Network (VPN) is used. Secured is a relative term, in this case, we are referring to a 256 bit encryption which is not easy to decrypt, just ask your IT team.

Updates and upgrades are another point of interest for a cloud-based treasury solution. In the previous decades, a number of different things needed to be considered before upgrading with the biggest one being cost. Cost of the upgrade. Cost of a new machine. Cost of retraining employees. Cost of downtime and opportunities lost. That’s a lot of costs. Once you are on the cloud with Axletree Solutions, your upgrades will be seamless. In fact, there is NOTHING that our customer’s need to do. Furthermore, they do not need to dedicate any additional IT resources. Updates are first pushed into a test environment, with a summary of the changes made, giving the treasury professional time to learn absorb the updates without having any downtime in the production environment.

Clouds are not going away in the near future, but that is no reason to be blue. A cloud-based solution is secure with access and update conveniences that are absent on a standalone treasury system. When working with a clouded-based treasury solution it is important to remember that a private cloud is the best way to go due to the security and compliance concerns that can arise from a public cloud. Once in the cloud, at least for Axletree customers, upgrading and updates become a cinch, keeping costs and downtime to a minimum. Bill Gates tells us that “The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency.” Become more efficient in your treasury operations by switching to the Treasurytree cloud today.