Zero-Touch Treasury at Duracell: Simplifying Global Finance, Managing Cash and Navigating Change

Mike, CEO, The Treasury Recruitment Company: So welcome to this week’s treasury career corner podcast. We’re interviewed treasury professionals about their treasury careers. Each and every week I talk to treasurer about how they built their careers, where they are now, where they see both themselves and the treasury profession going to next.

Mike: And at this week’s show, delighted to be joined by Mags Bourke, the Global Treasurer at Duracell. I’ve known Mags, I placed her at Duracell, we’re great friends, and she’s having a great time there. Duracell, I mean, everyone knows, but just in case, they’re a leading manufacturer and marketer of high performance alkaline batteries, lithium coins, rechargeable batteries, and other specialty cells.

Mike: They power devices across the globe, from your game consoles, baby monitors, smoke detectors, toys. Leader in their category and a trusted battery brand since 2018. Amazing. But Mags, you’ve got an interesting start to your story. Take us back, if you would, how you first got started, obviously, in construction and quantity surveying.

Mike: What then inspired you to follow Treasury? Over to you.

Mags, Global Treasurer at Duracell: Hello, Mike, and thank you very much for [00:01:00] podcast today.

Mags: When I finished uni I went into the construction industry. But I found it really exciting. There was so many projects.

Mags: So many clients and so much scope for progression. I felt that, I could really move forward in this career. And it was at the time it was stable. However, the construction industry experienced a downturn in the late eighties, so they were laying lots of people off. And this, it is quite cyclical, the construction industry.

Mags: So I decided , I’ve had enough of being. laid off three times in a row and I’ve just bought a house so I wanted stability and I’d always liked the idea of money markets and foreign exchange and so I decided to go down the treasury route and I had my first treasury role as assistant with waste management.

Mags: here in London, and that’s really what kicked it all off. And

Mike: You just thought, let’s go to treasury, but I talked to Meredith the other day, Meredith Vance’s, she saw an advert in the paper and [00:02:00] circled it and went, yeah, I’ll go for treasury.

Mike: , cause we’re talking in the nineties when I started in recruitment as well, and it was like, people said, oh, you’re going to do treasury. I said, what’s treasury? So, how did you find out about it?

Mags: Well, I just signed up with an agency, a local agency, and they wanted somebody that was, kind of entry level junior that would be an assistant that had some kind of work experience of being part of a team that had a good level of education and was able to apply some skills to the role.

Mags: And this people often say to me, well, it’s a huge difference between, quantity surveying and treasury, but actually it’s not because numeracy is key. So whether you’re counting bricks or you’re counting euros, it’s the same thing, right? Then there’s project management. We have our day to day activities, but both within.

Mags: Construction and treasury, we have add on projects and actually I’m working on quite a big project at Duracell at the moment where you [00:03:00] have to work with various stakeholders and then there’s the reporting element. Another key thing is being a team player, knowing where you are within the group and what you can contribute to the success of the business.

Mike: So you started waste management. So utilities business and things like that. So gave you a good intro to Treasury and then you move to Haskell or either talk us through the moves then because you’ve got some really good, great foundational Treasury experience.

Mags: Each time that I’ve moved roles, it was because there were specific reasons and mostly it was due to relocation of companies.

Mags: At that time, companies were moving out of London and they wanted me to go with them. But I wasn’t prepared to travel or, have a long commute because I’d started my family at that point. And so I had young children. Luckily after the waste management role they moved to Leatherhead in Surrey.

Mags: They, asked me to go with them, but I declined. I got a role nearby to where I live with [00:04:00] Hasker, who are a U. S. based engineering company. And that really was my next step up into being a treasury kind of analyst. The important experience I gained there was also exposure to risk management.

Mags: So we had various sites around the UK who were producing steel like in Redcar and Sheffield. And they had a huge UK employers liability program because people, it’s a dangerous business and people were getting injured. And so we’d have claims but also I was in charge of managing the real and property insurance.

Mags: and the public liability insurance. So that was a really good experience. And at one point I was debating whether to go down full time, the risk management route. But I decided to stay in treasury, but it was great experience because I was exposed to, the risk management side, which I then was able to take forward into other roles.

Again, Costco moved out of London. And then I moved to [00:05:00] Tibet and Britain who were like the number two logistics group in the UK at the time. And what was exciting about that role was. I was brought in, but also I had a junior.

Mags: So that was my first real experience of managing someone. And they had very little treasury experience. So I was able to pass on my experience from my two roles. But also, I was involved in off bank sheet financing. So this was to enable us. To lease quite a lot of the trailers and trucks that we were using in the logistics business.

Mags: And it was quite a new development in terms of, being creative around what was on the balance sheet in terms of assets and what was off balance sheet. , it was all perfectly legal, but it was, it’s quite a new way of doing things. So that was quite interesting. And I, that was quite, that team was quite big because.

Mags: I had a junior also there was a European treasurer as well as [00:06:00] having a group treasurer. So it was a slightly bigger team than I’d been used to, but five has been the maximum kind of treasury team size that I’ve been involved in to date.

Mags: And I know you love managing your team, so how do you balance being the treasury expert alongside managing the team?

,,

Mags: I’m really passionate about treasury and I’ve got a lot of energy for it. And hopefully that comes across, but it’s about the variety within the role. No two days are the same and we are the firefighters within the business.

Mags: Something comes up, it has to be dealt with immediately. There’s also such a, variety in terms of what you do even in your daily tasks. How do you manage FX?

Mags: How do you manage cash and liquidity? The funding of the business, because depending on your footprint, there’s certain activities that we can do in certain locations and not others, for example.

Mags: And also how do you bring cash back to the center when required? Again, there’s a lot of restrictions [00:07:00] around that. Our daily activities have changed and how we’re doing it has changed. I feel that one of my strengths is, mentoring and supporting people in their roles.

Mags: Not just within treasury, actually I’m now a mentor for other people within. Duracell in terms of how they approach things what, guiding them on. , in my experience, I did this and it worked. Or I would approach , someone, if it was an issue by saying, okay, let’s set some time apart.

Mags: , I find the mentoring and the developing of people. , so, rewarding, especially when they then decide to go full time into treasury roles, having been maybe in accounting or finance and several of my former colleagues have done that.

Mike: We were talking through your career journey.

Mike: You got to, you did Tibet, Britain, then you were courts, then Sotheby’s to then Subsea and Jerusalem. Walk us through those moves.

Mags: So Tibet and Britain also relocated to outside [00:08:00] London I then took a role at Courts and I thought, wow, this is going to be so exciting.

Mags: They’ve got furniture stores in 34 countries, seven of which are in Jamaica. And I was just in Visiting that I was going to be traveling to all these exotic locations and be exposed to exotic currencies like Jamaican dollar and lots of the other Caribbean currencies.

Mags: However, on day one it became apparent that they were in dire financial straits, right? They were close to folding, in fact, and I was really disappointed. However, I stuck it out because. It was probably the hardest experience I’ve ever had, because saying no is difficult. Choosing who to pay and not to pay is difficult.

Mags: And when you’re, within this situation, it’s stressful. You’ve had people there in the company for 15, 20 years. You’re like, , no, this is the way we’ve always done it. And that’s [00:09:00] part of the reason we’re in this situation. We have to change, we have to adapt in order to survive. And so it was really challenging.

Mags: But also I felt that, as I said, the best experience, because when a company’s doing well and you’ve got, significant excess cash. Then it’s quite easy, right? You just have to manage your cash flow and liquidity. And it’s more about investments, whereas here we were literally looking at, okay, we’ve got X amount of money to spend today, how are we going to spend it and making those decisions on, ad hoc on the spot, and then thinking about, how we’re going to manage the following day.

Mike: And if you pay one, and if you pay one, you sometimes can’t pay the other. So hang on. Which is the

Mags: right?

Mike: Yeah, which is

Mags: very difficult decisions to make. But as time went on, it was clear that there was no going back. We couldn’t come back from the precipice. And they brought in administrators to try and help the [00:10:00] situation, but it didn’t work.

Mags: So I realized that I had to leave because the writing was on the wall. And so I went from a company that had. virtually no money to a very successful cash rich company, which was Sotheby’s, the fine art auction house in the West End. And this was such a contrast, both in the way that the sector and also in the way that they operated.

Mags: It was a U. S. owned, privately owned company. They had operations, financial centers in Hong Kong, Geneva as well as in the UK and other areas within Europe. But what was in really different here was the in house bank in Geneva. So everything flowed through there in terms of settlements. And I worked very closely with them for all the sales settlements.

Mags: So it was very different because If you’ve got a Van Gogh or a Monet, you can’t just rock up to the auction house and say, I want to sell my painting tomorrow, please. It doesn’t work like that. There’s a set [00:11:00] calendar, right? There’s a set calendar and we have contemporary sales, impressionist sales at certain times in the year.

Mags: However, what was interesting there was we were building , what we call a private treaty business, where People could rock up and say, I’ve got this money to sell. And we’d say, okay, , we’ll advance you X amount against that painting. And then we’ll sell it in our summer sale in three months time.

Mags: And then you’ll get, we will be reimbursed in full for the advance and you’ll get the full amount. And it was a clever business because. We took commission from the buyer and the seller. So it was a win. But also what was interesting about that business was the amount of formalities surrounding payments.

Mags: We had to really comply with anti money laundering legislation. But also we were looking at watch lists. Who was who we could work with and who we couldn’t work with. And they were individual names. especially, [00:12:00] because of the geopolitical situation at that time there was a lot going on in Iran.

Mags: So that then meant that we couldn’t accept payments from Iran. We had to check all of the vendors very carefully. So there was a robust vendor master process. And also we had to work very closely with our banks to check that we could actually settle individual transactions and, individuals were not on watch lists.

Mike: So that was really interesting.

I love this stuff, but it’s just, you’ve gone from, quantity surveying. Through then, furniture company to then fine art to then subsea So it’s great.

Mike: I mean what a variety

Mags: Yes. So Subsea 7 is a oil and gas provides services to the oil and gas industry. And Mike, you placed me in that role.

Mags: And I thought to myself, Oh, this is going to be really different, really exciting. So my first role was in the Africa and Gulf of Mexico region. And within two weeks they sent [00:13:00] me to Nigeria.

Mags: And I’ve never been to Africa before and I think it was a test because it’s a challenging environment both for employees and the people that live there. And then when I arrived at Lagos airport I had a convoy to meet me. Who then whisked me straight to the hotel and brought me to a security briefing and explained that under no circumstances was I able to walk around outside of the hotel or even to the office, which was actually 50 yards away.

Mags: So what brought home to me there was. the challenging circumstances in which my colleagues were working. And that really helped because when you’ve got reporting deadlines and they don’t meet them, You have to understand why, right? We take internet for granted. However, in places like Angola, there could be hours where the whole country is without internet.

Mike: ,

Mike: it’s blackout,

Mags: you need to [00:14:00] be mindful and appreciate that they, it’s not a case of they, they don’t want to do the reporting, it’s a case of they can’t do the reporting. And you have to really appreciate that and be sensitive and sympathetic to their circumstances. There was a lot going on there where you had lots of joint ventures with other like client companies like BP.

Mags: So that everything was very tax driven there because if you’re, running a project and it’s, 300 million and you can shave 1 percent off your total project cost. It’s a big saving. So we work very closely with a a team in Paris because most of the countries we work with were Francophile, French speaking African nations, who then would split the project up into in country activities and out of country activities in order to reduce the tax impact.

Mags: And that could have, as I said, a huge. Driver towards whether how much [00:15:00] profit we’d make overall. So it was really interesting. But that was my first introduction to trophy management systems.

Mags: , I was brought in to, as I said, to manage the Africa and Gulf of Mexico region, but really to roll out the integrity treasury management system and provide training around that.

Mags: So that was my first time in really being hands on in managing a treasury management system, but then also bringing that to the various countries and teams and explaining what their activities would be, how it worked, what the benefits were and also how it would integrate centrally with the the core treasury team back in London.

Mike: So it was a really interesting company to work

Let’s get into Duracell. Cause I, I don’t want to run out of time today. Then Duracell came about, which obviously again, I got involved with, and I’m loving this story, but, when I placed you originally at Duracell, what were they at the time?

Mike: Cause I know it’s evolved massively in the time that, the company, [00:16:00] everyone knows that the headline name, but previously, how were they set up and then walk us through that, if you would, or the moves, if you like.

Mags: Yeah, so Duracell has been around as a brand for over 50

Mike: years.

Mags: However, it’s been owned by several different corporates. Back in March 2016, Berkshire Hathaway Inc. purchased Duracell from Procter Gamble. , they created Duracell. It’s balance sheet the P& L, everything from scratch. And on the 1st of March 2016, handed it to Berkshire Hathaway and said, I’m Off you go.

Mags: So this really is a , start up company. We’ve only been around as an individual company for eight years. And so we went from the very basic nuts and bolts of, Okay, here’s your bank accounts. Here are the people that are authorized on your bank accounts. And, having to manage everything manually.

Mags: To completely transforming the business to a very [00:17:00] much more automated and simplified corporate corporation. We operate in 34 countries across the world. We have three manufacturing locations, US, Belgium, and China. And we have actually expanded our operations , into new plants where we’re now making lithium coin.

Mags: batteries. Within the first six months, I was involved in acquiring two new companies, one of which was in Belgium, one of which was in Sweden to expand our footprint. And some new things that I’d not been involved in before that I led and have been really successful were a netting and pooling structure that we have based in the Netherlands.

Mags: , This was all hands on deck. This was 24 hours a day, 100 miles an hour, just to make sure that people had money, people got paid, and we could work with our suppliers. It was a huge challenge. And the team was [00:18:00] small because Berkshire Hathaway, they have a decentralized model. Again, I’ve not come across that before.

Mags: But there was some key things that were very different, that kind of Reduce the burden if you like one was we don’t hedge and second is we’re very conservative on our And where we invest our excess cash so there’s a policy in place where you know, there’s only a handful of things that we can invest in and that’s really all about risk averse risk aversion, so you know when a company the size of Berkshire Hathaway, we’re dealing with like hundreds of banks around the world.

Mags: We don’t really want to place our excess cash with banks because, they’re not as strong as placing your funds with the government in bonds. And that’s really, the focus of our policy. But yeah, as I mentioned, hedging doesn’t happen and any Berkshire Hathaway companies. And if you think about it, it makes sense because We could be hedging from a [00:19:00] portfolio position.

Mags: We could be hedging against other exposures that our sister companies have. And every hedge that you take has an inherent cost. We could be, hedging against another position and also it is expensive. So what we do is we employ a lot of natural hedging within Duracell. We negotiate with suppliers, whatever the functional currency is of that legal entity, that we receive funds in those legal entities.

Mags: So the only transactions we do are spot transactions like large. movements of cash around potentially cash repatriations via dividends or into company transactions. But that would be outside of the normal monthly netting and pooling cycles.

Mike: So,

Mike: Max without, again, because it’s confidential information, I don’t want to dive into that.

Mike: But with, what was the ethos behind that? You just, you touched on it there about the natural, the hedging. That’s a three

Mags: word cost. Yes. A group [00:20:00] wide strategy and it’s not just Duracell. This is for all Berkshire Hathaway companies.

Mike: So

Mags: It’s really unusual. And I’ve seen that it’s actually saved the company a lot of money because we don’t, hedges don’t always work.

Mags: There’s a lot of volatility in currency, especially in developing currencies or exotic currencies. So it doesn’t always work and you’re paying a margin each time you take out an FX, forward FX trade, for example. And that cost has been taken out of the business and you have therefore more cash to spend elsewhere.

Mags: And if you think about that multiplied dozens of times. It makes sense.

Mike: Let’s go back to you. So when you joined Duracell, again, I placed you Senior Treasurer Manager, Europe, Africa, Asia Pac, and then you’ve been promoted and your role’s grown and grown. Could you just walk us through those steps, if [00:21:00] you would?

Mags: As you mentioned, I was initially taken on with Duracell to basically manage everything out outside of North America from a treasury perspective.

Mags: So that was like 30 legal entities. It was really challenging, but at the beginning we did have, several consultants to help us.

Mike: And

Mags: as I mentioned at the beginning we are, Duracell is a very decentralized business. So we pushed a lot of the cash management activities down. into the legal entities.

Mags: So they would decide when payments are made, how payments are made. And we had, very strict policies and guidelines which act as the guardrails to everything we do from Berkshire Hathaway. So really it was all about, okay, this is a training. I’m here as a point person like to provide advice or backup and I still am a backup for every single legal entity Should you know the payment processes?

Mags: Being in a situation where people are out or they failed so [00:22:00] Everyone, every financial controller acts as a mini CFO, so I would be providing guidance and support to them on a day to day basis around how they would do things and what they should do in a particular situation.

Mags: , We don’t have much centralization in terms of funding, of cash pooling, apart from the cash pool in the Netherlands.

Mags: But that’s a notional pool, so there’s no commingling of funds. And we don’t have any suites apart from in the US. So it’s all very, as I said, decentralized and everyone operates within the guardrails.

Mike: Talk about how you’ve grown, , as a person. So you’ve gone from Senior Treasurer to Manager.

Mike: You’re now the Global Treasurer for, , a US corporate, . But the fact is, you’re based in London. Talk us through that. Yes, that’s right. How you run it.

Mags: Yeah. The role expanded as the company, stood up and we moved towards automation and simplification. I implemented a [00:23:00] lot of changes within treasury both on the reporting side, but also on for, large scale projects like netting and pooling where that is now the netting and pooling cycle is now fully automated.

Mags: And it’s zero touch and zero touch is something that. Our CFO is always pushing towards because as a company we’re all about continuous improvement. And that’s just not just, terms of processes, but within ourselves. So I was exposed to a lot more responsibility and took on a lot more responsibility in terms of owning processes.

Mags: And so that was recognized by promoting me to assistant treasurer, but also. I had actually been in the interim treasurer role twice, because as I mentioned, Duracell is very different to any other corporate I’ve ever worked at. We don’t even have a debt portfolio because. We’re owned by Berkshire Hathaway, which is one of the, the most cash rich, richest corporates in the world.

Mags: So [00:24:00] if we needed funding, we would reach out internally, but we managed to grow the business so that we’re self sufficient and the initial funding that we received from Berkshire Hathaway was repaid. And we’re now very successful in generating cash. So we have people we have the initial treasurer left the business and we had people come in that thought, okay I’m going to be running a team of people here.

Mags: I’m going to be strategizing. I’m going to be thinking about policy But weren’t able to really be hands on and we are very lean and mean organization We don’t have room for people that aren’t ready To get pull up this roll up their sleeves and get stuck in. We need to be involved in the day to day activities.

Mags: Even in, approving payments for whoever needs to help. And they didn’t quite grasp that. And so we had a bit of a revolving door around, global treasurers coming in and out. And I was asked to step into the in stream global treasurer role to support the business. [00:25:00] And I was offered the role twice, but at that time they wanted me to relocate to Chicago and I just didn’t feel that was the right move for me.

Mike: So

Mags: they did then make some changes to the structure of the senior lead team where the corporate controller became the treasurer but it was always meant to be , on an interim basis to bring stability to the treasury function. And I was made the assistant treasurer on a permanent basis.

Mags: But as time has progressed, it’s clear that I’m self sufficient from a treasury perspective. My manager, the corporate controller really is a touch point, escalation point. And I do have communication direct with the CFO. And last summer in recognition of the achievements that I’ve made, I was appointed to the role of global treasurer.

Mags: Which for me was realizing, a lifetime ambition

Mike: and part of that and the you touched on some of the [00:26:00] challenges, dealing with challenging regions like the Africa’s LATAM. Now you’re the global treasurer. You can influence and all of that. But how have you got through some of that stuff?

Mike: What’s been your ethos? How do you work with the teams there? Or, what’s your. Not a practical thing, like we do the cash pooling like this, but what are you like as a global treasurer?

Mags: So I’ve been very fortunate in Duracell that especially from the startup that I traveled extensively throughout the business.

Mags: And that helped me to build relationships and networks. And I think within the first 12 weeks I went to China, that was. The first, outside of the U. S., that was the first location that I visited, and again, it made me realize the different culture, the challenges that they face locally, but also to meet people face to face and for them to, they were really thrilled that somebody had come from corporate to visit them and actually [00:27:00] asked me, why did you decide to come to see us?

Mags: First country outside of the US.

Mike: Yeah.

Mags: And really it was driven by a conference, but also the fact that we have Our manufacturing, key manufacturing sites there and that it’s, that’s so important for us to have a fully, a very successful operation there in order to support the, the distribution of solar batteries.

Mags: They had a huge team and they, they’re successful. And also we’d never repatriated funds from China before. And so this was in order to lay the foundations towards. Executing a dividend and discussing how that works. And, it’s highly regulated in China, but also, but really it was the, to build that relationship.

Mags: And I’ve been, as I said, so lucky to visit virtually every country, every legal entity within Duracell to meet with the finance team, but no, we were all in this. There wasn’t people that said, Oh, we’ve been doing this for 20 years. This [00:28:00] is how we’ve always done it. We were through this whole experience of starting up the company together.

Mags: So we’ve got this unique bond and, collaboration, this, strength of collaboration where people were open to change. And that’s so important, when you want to drive a company forward from a starting point and you’ve got a goal to reach. So I think it’s just being sympathetic, as I said, to the circumstances, genuinely being interested in them as individuals.

Mags: and providing the support they need when they need it. So they know that when they, send me an email that I’m going to respond straight away and answer their questions or help them do whatever it is they need to help with. So I think it’s just being available and also being energetic, having the energy to drive change and flexibility and.

Mags: Collaboration, that I’m open to discussion because [00:29:00] everything was so new anyway.

Mike: And then, talk us through then, you touched on technology and you talked about ZeroTouch, which I was, I wanted to re dive into. The biggest change in tech, everyone’s AI. It’s not really that I want to talk about.

Mike: How do you guys make the best use of it?

Mags: Well, we keep things simple. As I mentioned, treasury management systems are great when you are, when you are centralizing treasury pooling funds.

Mags: But at Duracell, we’ve had three attempts at implementing treasury workstations and they’ve all failed because It’s a bit like taking a hammer to crack a nut, we’re decentralized . So it’s really about automating and simplifying the tools that we have.

Mags: And people might scoff and say, Oh, Excel models, blah, blah, don’t work for us. But they work for Duracell and I’ll give you an example. We put in the treasury workstation initially for G treasury and found out that it had a lot of limitations because [00:30:00] not all bank statements were electronic at the time.

Mags: So we had to manually input information. So if a process is not completely automated. It’s not going to deliver the goals that you want in terms of simplification and visibility to the data and information in order to make decisions. So we had to take that system out and then we decided to look at the SAP treasury model and that had a lot of positive points, but it couldn’t really handle the receivables element.

Mags: It was very simply taking. The net due date and saying, Oh, it’s a payment terms of 60 days. You’re going to get paid in 60 days.

Mags: , that’s not how it works. Most corporates like us have weekly payment runs and they pay in a specific day. But really it’s about looking at your daily processes and simplifying them.

Mags: So we had. Excel models. What can we avoid doing? Let’s be lazy about this. Let’s avoid doing, going to the bank portal and drawing down [00:31:00] bank statements. Let’s get a bot to do it. Yeah. So we worked internally with our it teams to look at automations recently. We started a bond program and I was capturing the maturities and all of the elements of the bonds on an Excel spreadsheet.

Mags: But I was. Totally scared that what if we miss maturity? So I went again to our finance transformation team and said i’ve got this process. I want to automate it I want to avoid missing maturities And so they came back and they did they provided an automated workflow So now we enter the details onto a sharepoint site those details are shared with the business And one week before maturity an email goes to the team says, okay, we have a maturity.

Mags: What do you want to do with it? So they input their decision. It comes back to me and then we execute whatever it is they want us to do. So that’s another example of automation. Also we were manually collecting effects state effects rate data on a daily basis, but now [00:32:00] we’ve implemented a power BI report.

Mags: So every time we want to refresh. Are reporting on effects rates daily from the start of the year to date, we run a PowerPoint power bi report and it populates all of the information. So the changes that we’ve made have really significantly impacted the amount of work that’s involved on a day to day basis on with, as a business, Duracell are.

Mags: always looking at, innovation continuous improvement also, what can we do to benefit the community or benefit, the the environment. So all of that is really inspiring. We have plants that are,  have been awarded for their innovation around how they can change.

Mags: Their packaging, make it more environmentally friendly, child safety. So all of these things are very top of mind and we’re encouraged to employ, technology [00:33:00] to all the tasks that we do on a daily basis. ,

Mike: this is just great. I’m just I’m sitting here. I know you and I’ve talked about their slots anyway.

Mike: Going more onto the career side. And if you look back over it, you’ve had this brilliant career so far and it carries on. And is there a piece of advice or some of the bits of advice? We’re not at the end of the show yet, but what piece of advice would you, again, we’re an advice show, people are listening.

Mike: You’re the global treasure at your cell. Any piece of advice you wish you’d received earlier or that you would pay forward or that you would give people?

Mags: I’ve got a couple of things that I would do differently. Throughout my career, unfortunately, in order to promote myself, I’ve had to move from one company to another.

Mags: And that is disappointing. And I think that in, things have changed in terms of What’s acceptable behavior and what’s not. And I have experienced, a lack of recognition or even a lack of support. For example, at one company, I wanted to pursue the treasury ACT treasury exams [00:34:00] and I was told that if I, they wouldn’t support me in that because I’d be overqualified for the role, which is really short sighted.

Mags: And sad, right? A lot of corporates now would be like, yeah, we’d want, we want somebody to be qualified. We want somebody that, okay, it’s got great experience, but then can frame that within the structure of formal qualifications and show that they’ve reached a level of understanding above and beyond what’s required and can apply that every single day.

Mags: So I would say, don’t let, the knockbacks, the challenges hold you back from achieving your ambitions.

Mike: Yeah, and also, if you’re listening and you’re a company that doesn’t support study, more for you. Because the fact is, if someone, you’re not going to, Support someone and help them grow and everything else and we’re doing about to do a lot more stuff with the AFP and CTP qualifications and things like that.

Mike: One of the reasons we do that is if you don’t [00:35:00] educate someone, they’re going to leave anyway. But if support them, they’ll stay. And yeah, there might become a natural time that they want to move or they need to move. But that’s a natural time. That’s not, for lack of support. It’s just short sighted, isn’t it?

Mags: Right. And it’s sad because you’re potentially losing a great resource that could bring more to the role because they’re now, learn so much of their treasury exam experience.

Mike: So we’ve given a bit of advice there, , and I know that you love your talent and passionate about developing them and things.

Mike: If someone’s looking to get into treasury or continue to develop, what should they be doing?  

Mags: I think they need to be passionate about what they do and have energy for it. I’ve always worked really hard, gone the extra mile, burn the midnight oil, whatever it needs, whatever you need to do to complete the job, you’ve got to do it, but at the same time, you need boundaries, especially as I’m fully remote.

Mags: And I’m managing treasury on a global level. [00:36:00] So I’m waking up to what’s happened in Asia. I’m managing Europe. And then, Chicago is our head office and it’s six hours behind. So it’s, it can be quite a long day. So I think. You need to have the energy, work hard, but also invest in yourself, set the boundaries.

Mags: Otherwise, you’re going to feel resentful, frustrated, and angry, and, you’re not going to do the best job that you can.

Mike: Now, I feel that we’ve actually already touched on it, but, I’ve got a couple of bits that you know, what excites you about treasury today?

What are you looking you look in your crystal ball? How do you see treasury continuing to evolve? We touched there on a little bit technology Is it technology the biggest thing driving it or is it people or what?

Mike: Where are we going next?

Mags: I think most companies are looking to do more with less and this is driven by costs, overhead and, at Duracell we’re no exception to that. But it’s not about losing people. It’s about becoming more agile [00:37:00] and using the tools that we’ve got. Especially around automation because treasury teams are getting smaller.

Mags: There’s no doubt about it. You haven’t got the 10, the 15, 20 headcount that you used to have. And there’s no need for it because. If you’re traveling and there’s a payment that needs to be released, you can do that on the app on your phone, and also that flexibility to be where you need to be and still operating as if you’re a fixed desk, which, that’s not required anymore.

I think we need to be constant, looking at continuous improvement. Okay what are we doing today that we don’t need to do, or even just not do? One of the key quotes from Warren Buffett is, knowing what to leave out is just as important as knowing what to focus on. Whether that’s, bringing in AI to help elevate your communication with senior management or the business as a whole, or employing a bot to bring in data to a spreadsheet, we need to be looking at all of the [00:38:00] tools and deciding which ones are going to work best for us, because automation and simplification is the way forward.

Mike: So we’re going to put your LinkedIn details in the show notes. So people can connect to you and they’d be lucky to have you as part of their network. But takeaways from today. You’ve worked across multiple sectors.

Mike: What are the advice you’d give to the treasury folk out there, whether they’re junior levels, mid-level, senior levels?

Mike: What thoughts?

Mags: I definitely would pursue the treasury exams because regardless of the amount of experience you’ve had, it’s really important to frame it within the formality of. You know what can be done and what others do and also to expand your knowledge and elevate your understanding of treasury Number two, I just think you know what work hard don’t be afraid to reach out ask questions or even make mistakes because That’s how you learn.

Mags: But also I think it’s a people thing. Make sure that you connect with people face to face as [00:39:00] often as you can and be sympathetic with their, the challenges that they face in whatever part of the world that they’re in because then you understand. Where they’re coming from.

Mike: Brilliant.

Mike: Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Connect with people everywhere, which is the essence of a successful treasury career, exactly as you’ve proved, Mags. Thank you very much. Amazing, as I say, you’re going to be flooded with lots of LinkedIn connections, which is, and rightly so. Thank you very much for today.

Mike: You’ve been absolutely brilliant as I knew you would be.

Mags: Thank you very much, Mike. Nice to talk to you.

Mike: And you