It's no secret that many companies, both in the United States and abroad, have dramatically increased the amount of cash they keep on hand, in large part by increasing their long-term debt load. REL Consulting, which is a division of The Hackett Group, and CFO Magazine recently analyzed the financial statements of the 1,000 largest U.S.-headquartered public companies that are not in the financial sector. They found that among these companies, long-term debt has more than doubled over the past 12 years and has grown nearly 20 percent in the past three years.

This trend is understandable, since many businesses struggled with liquidity during the recent downturn—but it's not sustainable. With interest rates rising and corporate credit ratings falling, borrowing is becoming much more expensive, and for some companies funding sources may completely dry up. Finance professionals across the United States are re-evaluating their cash and borrowing needs.

"Even if interest rates spiked a little too much in the short term, they're trending upward," says Dan Ginsberg, associate principal with REL. "The baseline is going up. We've reached a point where every treasurer and CFO is thinking, 'What are we going to do in a higher-interest-rate environment, where we simply can't borrow at the great rates that we've been getting?' Our answer to that is: Look at your own organization, at the working capital that is tied up in it right now. That's free money. It's already yours; you just have to get it."