Microsoft has long been recognized as having a remarkably innovative treasury team. The company won the 2021 Alexander Hamilton Overall Excellence Award from Treasury & Risk, as a result of submitting more than a dozen entries describing a wide range of projects—all of which were both highly successful and very creative. Some won awards, while others were bumped off the podium when our judges deemed another Microsoft initiative in the same category to be a bit more leading-edge.

To learn more about how Microsoft fosters such extreme innovation, Treasury & Risk invited Tahreem Kampton, who at the time was Microsoft's new corporate treasurer, and Jayna Bundy, general manager of Microsoft's Global Treasury & Financial Services group, to participate in a roundtable discussion. We were joined by three of the 2021 award winners—Vinni Dang, senior treasury manager; Fanny Niu, senior finance manager in the Global Treasury & Financial Services group; and Andrey Naumiuk, senior finance manager for the Azure Data group—as well as Peter Klein, CTO of treasury app vendor FinLync.

You can view the full conversation about building a culture that emphasizes continuous improvement in our on-demand webcast. Following are excerpts from the event.

Meg Waters, editor in chief, Treasury & Risk:  Treasury teams are often seen as bean counters who spend their time in the weeds of financial management and analysis, but it seems that Microsoft treasury has long emphasized continuous improvement and taking a big-picture view of what treasury could or should be. Where does this emphasis by Microsoft's treasury leadership come from?