The challenge:

Since the original implementation of the Quantum treasury system, the company had hosted the solution on its own servers and managed the IT processes in-house. Over time however, it began to outsource functions due to a desire to seek greater cost efficiencies. Eventually, this practice resulted in a delicate balance of three different providers managing different parts of the airline’s treasury solution. One handled the server, one managed the desktop services, and the third oversaw the network.

This approach created both operational risk and frustration. If an issue arose, troubleshooting could take half a day as all three vendors were typically involved. Additionally, there was additional operational risk with just one of the Qantas employees overseeing the entire process and maintaining the solution knowledge.

The solution:

In order to mitigate the operational risk associated with its current set-up, Qantas worked towards putting in place a solution that would migrate its treasury infrastructure management onto a private cloud, hosted environment. “The solution consolidates our data sources and information into a single, customisable desktop, offering us a real-time view of our global risk and cash positions. It also helps us maintain proper controls around our processes,” says Anthony Impala, Treasury Systems Manager at Qantas.

The migration of Quantum to the new hosting environment went smoothly and was completed in just two months from start to finish without disruption to the day-to-day treasury operations. In the first month-end run, Qantas experienced one minor issue. However, rather than spending several hours troubleshooting between three providers, its single point of contact at its solution provider was able to fix the problem quickly.

Best practice and innovation:

The Quantum treasury system is being used for front office risk management and position entering, and back office accounting and settlements. This is a significant task, given that Qantas hedges a foreign exchange risk of approximately US$2 billion and an annual fuel bill of more than US$4 billion. The solution helps Qantas manage its complex treasury operation, gives a real-time view into cash and risk, and helps the company standardise and automate processes, while maintaining proper controls and full audit trails.

Moving the Quantum solution to a hosted environment has given the treasury team at Qantas a single point of contact for faster troubleshooting as well as an increased level of support and expertise behind that troubleshooting. “We realised that a dedicated hosted treasury environment using a trusted partner with the product experience offered greater security and comfort as well as reduced IT costs than maintaining an in-house team or an outsourced environment with multiple providers,” says Impala.

Their previous provider would install patches on the server that would impact their uptime; now maintenance is performed outside of business hours, and the system offers improved stability. Furthermore, as the database and administration is now managed, the Qantas treasury team no longer face the operational risk and resource drain associated with managing three providers whenever there is an issue.

Overall, Qantas was able to implement a dedicated hosted treasury environment that offered greater security and comfort as well as reduced IT costs than maintaining an in-house team or an outsourced environment with multiple providers.