Ever since cash management banks began to force corporate customers out of dial-up systems and onto bank Web sites to get their daily feeds of information, Jim Maddox has had to cope with lots of early-

morning headaches. As the manager of cash management at Eastman Chemical Co. in Kingsport, Tenn., Maddox has been overseeing his treasury's transition to scheduled file transfer protocols (FTPs) that will hopefully retain the high degree of automation Eastman Chemical enjoyed in the dial-up world. With some of its banks, the FTPs into and out of its XRT workstation work great, but with others, Eastman Chemical's treasury and its banks must struggle with complications.

Some information that formerly was encrypted during transmission, but arrived decrypted, now arrives encrypted and has to be decoded by treasury, Maddox explains. But switching to the Web platform has saved Eastman Chemical money on balance and transaction reports, he notes, and given that most of the banks clearly intend to abandon their dial-up altogether, treasuries really have little choice but to plow ahead.