Campbell Soup's cutting-edge cash management.

• Author: Moss, James D.
• Position: Cash Management

At Campbell Soup, a trim treasury management department is pushing technology and allying with banks. The team's philosophy? "Do better what we already do well."

Downsizing is one of the most frequently used words in American business today. Treasury management departments are in the process of shrinking. We're all being asked to do more with less, to work smarter.

Campbell Soup Company is no exception. But we've managed to stay one step ahead of the process by making a commitment to state-of-the-art treasury management systems. For example, when the company reduced its corporate headquarters staff by more than 20 percent in 1990, the treasury operations weren't affected. Why not? Since 1985, we've been restructuring our department to be more efficient and cost effective, automating numerous functions and adjusting our staffing.

In treasury management, the size of the company and the degree to which it's centralized determine how much specialization and automation a firm can justify. We manage the more than $5-billion domestic cash flow for Campbell Soup and its subsidiaries, including Pepperidge Farm, Vlasic Foods, and Godiva Chocolatier, controlling all the cash centrally from our corporate headquarters in Camden, New Jersey. We also manage Campbell's Delaware holding companies from an office in Newark, Delaware.

Because we manage cash centrally but have decentralized accounts payable and payroll at the plant level, we have an unusually high number of cash accounting transactions. We're responsible for short-term investing, short-term borrowing, cash management, bank risk management, bank relationship management, and accounting for the Delaware subsidaries. We do all this with a staff of seven in the treasury management department: the director of treasury operations, the manager of cash and banking, the manager of cash operations, the controller (in Delaware), a cash management analyst (in Delaware), and two clerical assistants, one for cash operations and one for cash management. We all report to the treasurer.

AUTOMATION TO THE RESCUE

In the mid-1980s, Campbell's treasury management department was more of a cash accounting organization than a treasury management department. We were literally drowning in paperwork. We had more than 40 locations that processed their own accounts payable and weekly payroll checks which meant we funded more than 80 accounts and manually tracked the daily clearings of each.

We used zero balance accounts, or ZBAs, to control the cash movements centrally. But recording...