With a couple of clicks on the right buttons, Fred Schacknies and his treasury and finance colleagues at Lucent Technologies Inc. can see, real-time, all of Lucent's more than $4 billion in bank cash and cash investments. Well, almost all and almost real-time. Daily reports on more than 98% of Lucent's bank cash are available through the electronic polling done through Lucent's Trema treasury workstation. While the other 2% has to be updated manually from monthly paper statements, he concedes, it really is too small to have an impact on liquidity decisions and cash forecasts.

For these calculations, Lucent benefits from a high degree of integration between Trema and its ERP system from SAP, explains Schacknies, director of in-house banking. "We have very smooth, extensive information-sharing between Trema and SAP," he says. "We're still looking to expand the scope and functionality of those interfaces, but we're very close to where we need to be, especially where A/P and A/R are concerned."

Workstation-ERP integration is not unusual, although performance varies from case to case. But during the last few months, Lucent has been able to expand the data feed into its workstation–well beyond what the ERP can provide–by tapping into what Schacknies calls 'the sales funnel and sourcing channels.' "Trema is interfaced with those portals to get an updated view of expected revenue and expenses" before they show up as A/P and A/R, Schacknies says. "We have access to the same information the sales people use to make their sales forecasts."