Snowflake treasury’s current key priorities are three-fold. The first is managing liquidity to meet business needs, while mitigating reinvestment risk. This is crucial in light of continued signs of economic moderation and potential Fed rate cuts, which we’re addressing by thoughtfully extending the duration of our investments.
Secondly, driving efficiency is important and we’re doing this by automating treasury processes. This initiative allows the team to dedicate more time to analysing data and making strategic decisions, rather than spending time on manual model updates. It’s also helping reduce manual work in Excel by connecting data from sources like Workday, bringing it into Snowflake, and presenting and visualising the data in Streamlit. By boosting productivity and facilitating more informed decisions, we effectively tackle the frustration of lost productivity hours.
Finally, we’re continuously thinking of innovative ways to improve finance processes and leveraging technology that interact with treasury by creating cutting-edge processes, using automation, and integrating with the broader CFO tech stack. This also includes showcasing Snowflake’s platform within the finance community, consisting of the sales team and financial services customers (largely banks) to illustrate our capabilities, such as importing bank statements into Snowflake, and add tagging based on their transaction codes.
Integrating new technology in treasury has been part of our strategy in recent years. This has helped us in three core areas, including giving us the opportunity for enhanced decision-making. For example, by leveraging Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud, we’ve gained near real-time visibility into cash flow trends, liquidity needs, and risk exposures. This access has enabled us to better align our financial strategies with the company’s broader objectives. One such example is a dashboard that was created for current cash and investments in near real-time to provide more visibility to the C-suite.
Snowflake’s platform on top of our wider tech stack has also helped increase efficiency as we’ve implemented automation tools to streamline routine processes like cash management, forecasting, and reconciliation. This transition from manual to automated processes will reduce errors and operational risk, while also freeing up valuable time for the team to concentrate on strategic initiatives, rather than administrative tasks.
Finally, we are benefitting from strengthened risk management by integrating advanced risk management platforms to manage FX exposure more effectively. These tools will enable us to model various scenarios and implement hedging strategies, ensuring the stability and security of our financial operations against potential market fluctuations.
Going forward, we will be looking to leverage Snowflake’s AI capabilities, such as Snowflake Cortex, to provide insights instead of generic dashboards.
At Snowflake, we prioritise partnering with top-tier global banks. We’ve invested efforts in achieving near real-time visibility into our accounts with our banking customers, as this proactive approach allows us to stay ahead of potential risks rather than simply reacting to them.
In our treasury we seek candidates with strong analytical skills in financial modeling, data analysis and risk management. Proficiency in treasury management systems, automation tools and fintech innovations is highly valued. While an understanding of global financial markets, liquidity management and compliance is essential, proficiency with technology is becoming increasingly more important.
We also look for individuals who have a strategic and adaptive mindset. This means aligning treasury functions with corporate goals and being able adapt to economic and technological changes.
On top of these hard skills, we are also on the hunt for candidates that display soft skills too. Everything from effective communication, collaboration, leadership and project management skills are crucial for working with various departments and driving initiatives like process improvement, automation and technology integration.
