| Declan McGivern, managing director, MATRIX Treasury Consultants… ‘MATRIX made a decision on commencement of the business to hire only people who had held positions in treasuries in either corporate or financial institutions. There’s no substitute for experience!’. |
6.45: Alarm. Good grief, it’s time to get up again. I’m definitely not a morning person as it takes two strong shots of caffeine and nicotine before I can consider shaving. Fairly much a life-long ritual is observed in the morning regardless of the day of week.
7.15: Out of the house and onto the motorway at Naas. There’s a 50/50 chance that I’m heading to the airport, but today it’s to the Dublin Head Office. With another office in Windsor and a representative office in Vienna, it seems I spend half my life on short haul flights and I constantly have to ensure I’m heading in the right direction.
Ah, the joys of the open road! Listen to the radio in the car and wonder would it be a good business proposition to set-up a commercial station transmitting only good news - especially about the traffic congestion that lies ahead! As it’s July it takes me 45 minutes to the office, but more often it will take well over an hour.
8.05: At my desk and fire-up the laptop. Numerous e-mails pour in, some for now others for later. Those that require response tend to get it before 9 a.m. These would normally be client related or scheduling of internal meetings. Make a mental note that I must call Kevin Grant in the UK office to catch up on a number of prospects he’s working on. I’ve already postponed him twice and I don’t think I’ll be flavour of the month if I delay him again.
9.00: My PA, Claire Bird arrives with post and coffee. She will open and distribute the post and thankfully screen out the junk mail. We settle down for our once weekly meeting to sort my diary, travel arrangements and various other matters for which she has responsibility.
10.00: Scheduled conference call with one of our consultants and a client in Brussels. As a result of an acquisition our client now has two European Treasuries - one in Brussels and one in Berlin. We’ve undertaken the project to merge the two into a single European treasury centre with common processes, people and systems. Today’s call relates to the cash management aspect of the merger. Two different lead banks, two methods of cash concentration and two months to get a combined process agreed, up and running. We decide on a change to the original deadline and our consultant will update the project plan accordingly. Receive a progress report on the project for the last week and everything seems to be on schedule. I undertake to go to Brussels next week for the project Steering Group Meeting.
11.15: Make that call to Kevin. MATRIX operates a centralised marketing and sales function headed by Kevin based at our Windsor office. Through the wonders of technology (and Lotus Notes), we in Dublin have full access to the application and database supporting both our marketing prospects and current projects. We’ve found that centralising systems whilst distributing processes has cutout a great deal of unnecessary communication by phone and e-mail. It allows people to update themselves as and when it suits them best. So long as everybody follows the internal operating procedure and updates the information in near real-time, an accurate position by prospect, client and project can be obtained on-line.
We run through the marketing budget for the remainder of the current year and make a few minor changes to the allocation of spend. There are so many treasury related conferences and seminars these days that it is neither possible nor desirable to addend or exhibit at them all. We decided, after an approach from Eurofinance, to commit to exhibiting at the IACT conference in Dublin next October. It’s our home turf after all.
Kevin has two speaker slots to fill for a forthcoming seminar on Cash Management to be held in Brussels and London in conjunction with TMI. We’ve already filled three slots and discuss potential speakers from our existing client base.
12.15: Have a look at the post. Draft-up a few replies and pass them to Claire for typing.
12.45: Lunch. Normally I shy away from invites to business lunches; I enjoy a break from the office. So I go for a walk and eat a sandwich with whoever’s around.
1.30: Into the car and head to the IFSC for a 2 o’clock meeting with an important client and a system vendor. The client purchased a Treasury Management System from the vendor some years ago and is having difficulty adopting the latest release to support the business processes. The meeting isn’t savory as we challenge the vendor to make good his contractual commitments. Eventually a plan of action is agreed whereby the client will receive a series of fixes to correct functional defects. The timeframe agreed looks a little on the optimistic side to me but I’m always willing to be pleasantly surprised.
4.00: Back at the office. A list of unreturned telephone calls has built-up. One from Steve Riley our Technical Director seems the most important, so I call him first. He needs a Treasury Consultant, based here in Dublin, to fly to a client site in Amsterdam next week. We discuss the impact on currently scheduled work and decide that we can release her for three days beginning Tuesday. Like all businesses based in Ireland we find it difficult to find the right caliber individuals to fill our consultants positions. MATRIX made a decision on commencement of the business to hire only people who had held positions in treasuries in either corporate or financial institutions. There’s no substitute for experience!
Return remainder of phone calls.
5.00: Start getting my bags packed with files and ensure the laptop has got the right documents in there; I’m off to London in the morning for a presentation to a prospective client. Run through the presentation and make a back-up copy on floppy - one never knows when one may just let the laptop fall or bump!
6.00: Face the rush hour. Two evenings per week I go horse riding in Osberstown - a lifelong pursuit. Get to the house at 7.00, a quick change and off to the stables. We’re preparing for a show in a couple of weeks time so I try not to miss any evening leading up to it if possible. They say practice makes perfect, so I’ll keep trying.
9.30: Home from the stables, not sore but with a bruised ego; three refusals and one pole down. As golf is so frustrating and I’m past playing football, riding is an ideal way to eliminate any frustrations of the day. |
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| Article appeared in the July 2001 issue.
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