Administration September 10, 2003

Finance Officers Take Cash Management to the Web

October 21, 2002 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - Cash management is the finance function most frequently conducted on the Web, a new survey found.

Reported by

Fred Schneyer

According to the survey by the Association of Financial Professionals (AFP), nearly eight in nine respondents said they deal with their company’s cash flow and bank relationships on the Internet.

About 50% of the respondents also use the Internet for investment and foreign exchange services.

According to the AFP, the survey revealed that while expectations for rapid adoption have become more realistic, healthy growth in Internet usage in finance functions is still expected in the next year.

Survey findings include:

some 34% reported a Web usage increase for foreign exchange services while 35% reported an increase in connection with investments.
respondents said barriers to Internet usage continue to be security (84%), enforceability of contracts (57%), inability to integrate data with internal systems (54%), and credit quality of counterparties (52%).

The survey was conducted in July 2002 via e-mail to 2,000 AFP members and yielded 272 responses, for a response rate of 14%. The typical respondent works at a company with annual revenues between $500 million and $999 million.