You are the Group Treasurer for AsiaPac Flour Manufacturing Group Berhad with their head office in Kuala Lumpur with three wholly-owned subsidiaries operating flour mills at three main ports in Peninsular Malaysia - Penang Port (Northern region), Johor Port (Southern region) and Klang North Port (Klang Valley and East Coast region).

All the mills accounting and treasury are decentralised, and each mill has its' own accounting, treasury and credit control with six (6) headcounts under each operating entity. All three private limited entities use the Group's standard accounting software and HSBC Bank nearest to their mills but are not linked (no online real-time linkage) with the Head Office on the premise of a separate legal entity. Each mill reports to the Head Office monthly using the group standard reporting package for operations and financial performance for consolidation and group reporting purposes.

As a result, there is a duplication of the accounting, treasury and credit control functions for the three mills. The Head Office is mainly a cost centre, and inefficiencies in working capital management are prominent. As the mills are operating independently asseparate entities, some mills have a huge cash surplus, and others are in a deficit position and utilise bank overdrafts to meet their financial obligations. In all, at the group level, the treasury function is not optimised. Amid Covid-19, with the Movement Control Orders (MCO), most of the accounting, treasury and credit control staff work from home (WFH) and thus pave the way for the Group to implement centralisation of accounting, treasury and credit control functions throughout the Group.

Required:

Based on Journeys-to-Treasury (JTT) 2020-21 Report (www.journeystotreasury.com), propose how you can improve and consolidate the corporate treasury functions of the three mills at the group level in Kuala Lumpur based on currently available technology transformation.

State the expected outcome, benefits and challenges of your above restructuring plan, including the COVID-19 impacts based on JTT COVID-19 Special Edition Report (see https://www.journeystotreasury.com/special-edition).