2019 Alexander Hamilton Awards in Working Capital & Payments

From real-time payments to straight-through processing of reconciliations, and from extended terms to emerging options such as virtual cards, payments innovation is one of the hottest topics in corporate treasury today. That explains why the competition was fierce in this year’s contest for the Alexander Hamilton Awards in Working Capital & Payments.

The companies that stood out from the crowd were those that not only pursued leading-edge technologies and ideas, but also transformed processes in an effort to standardize and centralize payments. “[Our] new process is very streamlined,” says Jeff May, former supervisor for global treasury at Amway. “Like always, there are exceptions. In certain countries, local requirements mandate that specific payments go through processes that are not our standard workflow. But for the vast majority of our payments around the world, we’ve eliminated a lot of unnecessary steps that used to waste time and cause payment delays in our legacy environment.”

Here’s how these three companies revolutionized payments:

• Bronze Award:  Bristol-Myers Squibb implemented a set of new payment methods for corporate travel spending. The combination of virtual card account, travel card, corporate purchasing card, and central travel account has reduced risk and eliminated around 4,000 hours of busy work for staff each year.
• Silver Award: The treasury team at Amway rolled out payment hubs in four corporate shared service centers and rationalized bank relationships globally. Amway does business in 100 countries and territories; payments from all those jurisdictions now flow through the payment hubs, with very few exceptions. Processes involve much less manual effort, and treasury has better visibility into cash flows companywide.
• Gold Award: Microsoft treasury realized that supporting growth in its Brazilian subsidiary meant streamlining cross-border payments. The team worked with an internal engineering group to develop a plug-in to the company’s ERP system. The solution automated processes around the documentation Microsoft Brazil must provide its banks before it can make a payment that moves funds out of the country.

All three projects were successful largely because of collaboration, both internal and external, and careful handling of change management concerns. “Treasury speaks in our terms; the business and international finance groups may use different terminology,” says Sunnie Ho, a senior treasury manager in Microsoft’s Global Cash Management group. “On a conference call, misunderstandings might happen. Meeting in person meant traveling to Brazil, but it was well worth the effort.”

Congratulations to all three organizations! And thank you to the judges of this year’s competition: Jean-Francois Heitz, former deputy CFO and treasurer of Microsoft; Craig Jeffery, managing partner of Strategic Treasurer; Marie Hollein, former president and CEO of Financial Executives International; and Prashant Patri, a principal in Deloitte’s Global Treasury Advisory Services practice.

Finally, thank you very much to Citi, ION, and GTreasury for sponsoring this year’s Alexander Hamilton Awards program. Stay tuned for webcasts and articles throughout the year recognizing the winners in our other categories, as well as the winner of the 2019 Alexander Hamilton Overall Excellence Award.

• Replay today’s webcast celebrating these three Working Capital & Payments award winners by registering to view the on-demand version.
• Register soon for our June 19 webcast honoring the winners in the Treasury Transformation category.
• Read here about the 2019 winners in Technology Excellence.
• And/or register here for the on-demand webcast recognizing those same projects.