Customers

A leading provider of innovative merchandising systems for the retail and apparel industries with revenues in excess of US $1B had recently experienced a material impact to earnings as a result of foreign exchange volatility. In an effort to improve earnings predictability and the efficacy of its foreign exchange program, the Treasury department was tasked with finding a fast, yet cost effective solution.

A new Treasurer with bold, strategic sight quickly realized that whatever the firm was doing to manage its foreign currency exposure, it wasn’t enough; no matter how many people he threw at the problem, Treasury still couldn’t get the needed data in a timely manner. He instigated an effort to automate all treasury processes including building an FX management solution using extracts and reports, but soon understood that such an FX system would be impossible to update and maintain. During a meeting with IT to justify an external versus internal solution, the head of IT, learning of FiREapps’ functionality, asked, “Why would we want to build this ourselves?” The FiREapps partnership soon began.

A leading provider of electronic design automation software and services used to design complex integrated circuits for the global semiconductor and electronics industries was interested in increasing efficiencies and improving the overall compliance and effectiveness of its Foreign Exchange Risk Management program.

This international, premier provider of consulting services, with a global team of more than 400 consultants working from more than 60 locations in major world cities, pioneered the establishment of a presence in China and other emerging markets. Over five years, the firm’s geographic distribution of revenue showed a shrinking Americas share, a growing Asia‐Pacific share, and a stable European share that represented more than one‐third of revenues. The firm had also experienced five acquisitions since 2008, gaining a growing number of disparate ERP systems, while a lean, single‐staffed treasury lacked visibility into foreign exchange exposure. It was against this backdrop that the firm’s new CFO mandated the creation of a FX risk management policy and program, recommendations for which would ultimately be presented to the Board.