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Managing money is essential for entrepreneurs. An expert guides them toward the best solution to maintain liquidities and optimize profitability.
Jean-Michel Parizeau, Practice Vice-President within the firm, is part of the largest specialized treasury team in Canada and explains his contribution to organizations.
How would you describe your work?
We help clients improve their cash flow procedures, so our work relates to cash forecasting and payments. We provide visibility and predictability in terms of cash inflows and outflows. It’s very different from one industry to another.
We also help clients manage fraud prevention, financial risk, foreign exchange and interest rates, and bank reconciliation.
Our team works with state-of-the-art technology solutions for large corporations and SMEs, and we negotiated partnerships for customized solutions. We can therefore guide our clients in the implementation of a solution that gives them more control over their finances and provides them with additional leverage in their relations with suppliers and banking institutions.
What is a typical day?
We interact with a variety of clients: banks, insurance providers, large corporations and SMEs. In a single day, we can answer a wide variety of questions. Generally, we work on six or seven files in parallel with clients, so the days fly by.
Sometimes, for larger assignments, certain teams devote themselves to a particular client for a period of time, which is also very enjoyable.
How has the interest in your services evolved over time?
Our job has always been to optimize cash management, but now technology is increasingly being used to reduce the number of manual tasks and make processes more efficient. The work of finance professionals has become increasingly interesting over time.
In a context of full employment, companies are looking for efficiency and new options offered by technology. Why connect to four banking platforms and download information manually when one technological solution can provide this information in real time, wherever you are in the world? They seek our expertise therefore to help them evolve.
What training is required to exercise your profession?
Usually, it takes a bachelor’s or master’s degree in finance. Technological knowledge is also important, because we adapt solutions to each client’s situation and specific features. The needs differ from one industry to another and from one organization to the next.
What personal qualities are required more on a daily basis?
I value attitude, that is, the desire to work as a team and deliver quality to our clients as well as the desire to develop expertise. There is a wide range of possible niches and, here, we like to plan a development path for each team member.
What are your greatest challenges?
We have a significant number of clients and the tasks can build up, so sometimes you need to know how to say no and, above all, to learn how to ask for help at the right time.
Also, since cash flow is vital for companies, our clients expect us to be focused on their problems, so we have to be able to live with a certain amount of pressure, while still finding it acceptable.
What do you like most about your work?
The diversity of the assignments and the team. I thrive on the relationships with my colleagues. I have 25 years of experience in treasury and I don’t have the solution to everything; I’m not a specialist in every sector. You need to work as a team to find what works best. I like that aspect. When we find optimal solutions that meet the client’s needs, that’s our greatest satisfaction.
What advice would you give to someone interested in doing this job?
It’s an industry that offers a lot of learning opportunities, so I think you have to have an open mind and be motivated. You have to cultivate patience and humility, because there’s still a lot to learn after university. You also have to be focused on providing quality to your clients at all times.