For the past year, the treasury at DuPont has been working diligently to move from regional liquidity management to global, reorganizing its cash operations around two treasury centers in Wilmington and Singapore and whittling away at its banking relationships until it is essentially down to three major regional banks–Citibank, J.P. Morgan Chase and Bank of America. And that's about as far as it plans to cut for now.

Why not simply choose one global overlay bank? Banks would line up for the job. Webber Lee, DuPont's assistant treasurer, says there's no need. "Cash management depends on information, and we can get that information now without depending on a bank," Lee says. How? Through its SunGard Quantum treasury workstation, of course.

Lee is taking advantage of what has been a quiet revolution in treasury technology. During the past two years as CFOs and treasurers sat on the sidelines when it came to capital investments in technology, workstation manufacturers like SunGard have been hard at work building a new generation of more powerful and flexible products, now available at only modestly higher prices. "The value proposition is stronger today," says Ron Chakravarti, a New York-based principal at a leading financial-management consulting firm, Treasury Strategies Inc., based in Chicago. "Features they were just talking about two years ago are now available and can bring new levels of automation and efficiency."