The AW Rostamani group has achieved “operation excellence” by re-engineering its treasury with the assistance of technology, reports SunGard, which has focused on it in a corporate case study.
It says that group treasurer Omar Abu Shaqra has been instrumental in evolving the treasury function from being a small component of the group’s accounting department to being a fully fledged, discrete department in its own right.
In order to achieve this goal, Abu Shaqra embarked on a project to reassign responsibilities, introduce new policies and procedures, and deploy a treasury management system (TMS) to better facilitate treasury operations, including cash management, risk management and accounting.
He also transferred some of the activities that he firmly believes do not belong in treasury to other departments. As a result of this extensive project, AW Rostamani’s group treasury “now operates in a simplified, more streamlined and efficient manner”.
A major outcome of the project is that the AW Rostamani treasury has centralised its main functions, including liquidity and risk management, systems implementation, banking relationships, cash pooling and in-house banking. Certain functions, such as cash forecasting and account management, have been decentralised at business level.
In addition to managing its critical functions, AW Rostamani’s treasury – which comprises Abu Shaqra and a further two treasury professionals – also provides support to a group of 10 subsidiaries operating in different sectors within the United Arab Emirates and Gulf Cooperation Council region.