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AFP Executive Guide: Selecting the Right Treasury Metrics
The AFP Executive Guide: Selecting the Right Treasury Metrics provides insights into choosing effective metrics for treasury teams to measure performance, track efficiency and manage financial health.
Metrics give treasury teams a quantifiable way to measure performance, monitor progress and spark meaningful conversations with internal and external stakeholders. The mainstreaming of treasury management systems (TMS), combined with a rapid adoption of AI tools, is creating new opportunities to identify performance drivers, pull data across disparate systems and more easily and quickly track metrics and report on them.
“An effective metric must be both easy to measure and understandable.”
— Mack Makode, Vice President and Treasurer, Under Armour
What’s Inside the Guide
Efficiency vs. Effectiveness Metrics
There are two types of metrics that treasury teams typically track. They are efficiency and effectiveness:
- Efficiency metrics track productivity and workflow
- Effectiveness metrics measure how well a process achieves its goal
The real power comes when these metrics work together — efficiency supports effectiveness. The AFP Executive Guide: Selecting the Right Treasury Metrics explores building balanced metrics strategies tailored to your company’s structure, goals, and risk profile.
Features of Effective Metrics
What makes a treasury metric truly effective? It must be both easy to measure and understandable. Not all metrics are created equal. The guide showcases examples on how to build smarter, more impactful metrics that are:
- Aligned with strategy
- Tied to clear objectives
- Focused on progress
- and more
Beyond Performance
Treasury’s Value Goes Beyond the Numbers. While efficiency and effectiveness metrics are essential, they don’t fully capture treasury’s broader impact. Treasury teams can demonstrate strategic value by:
- Tracking the accuracy of long-term forecasts
- Analyzing the volume and type of operational support requests
- Developing self-service tools to empower other departments.
Treasury’s influence often shows up in collaborative outcomes, like improved payment terms or currency strategies, even if the metrics are indirect. The guide explores how to capture that value.
Technology’s Impact
Treasury Management Systems (TMS) and AI tools are revolutionizing how treasury teams collect, analyze, and act on performance data. With TMS, teams gain real-time visibility into global cash positions, automate reconciliations, and streamline reporting. AI enables faster data analysis, dashboard creation, and predictive insights, all without the need for heavy IT investment.
This guide illustrates how to focus on fewer, more meaningful metrics. Technology isn’t just about speed—it’s about freeing up time for strategic decision-making and improving agility in response to market changes.
Why is This Guide Important?
The AFP Executive Guide: Selecting the Right Treasury Metrics helps professionals understand the difference between efficiency and effectiveness metrics in treasury, and how to align them with strategic goals, which is crucial for making informed decisions rather than relying on instinct or outdated practices.
It includes detailed metric examples across key treasury functions:
- Liquidity Management
- Banking
- Payments
- Foreign Exchange
- Working Capital
- Capital Markets
In today’s unpredictable financial environment, metrics provide fast feedback on risk exposure and performance. Treasury Management Systems (TMS) and AI tools are transforming how metrics are tracked, analyzed and used for decision-making—making it especially relevant for teams undergoing digital transformation.
Who Should Use This Guide?
This guide is ideal for:
- Corporate Treasurers & Assistant Treasurers
- Cash Managers
- Treasury Analysts
- Finance Directors & CFOs
- Controllers
- Treasury Technology Managers
Download the full guide to Selecting the Right Treasury Metrics.