Taking a domestic business global is always challenging. Most every treasury process—from cash forecasting to bank account reconciliations, and from payments to financial risk management—becomes much more complex when performed across borders, across compliance regimes, and across currencies. That typically means the treasury group must transform itself in order to continue to effectively, and efficiently, support the company's needs.

That's the common theme that spans this year's Alexander Hamilton Award–winning projects in the category Treasury Transformation.

When Baltimore-based telecommunications equipment provider Ciena Corporation began expanding rapidly overseas, "we anticipated that … cash would be spreading all over the place," says Thomas Liu, Ciena's vice president and treasurer. "Visibility would be challenging in this environment. Plus, intercompany transactions would multiply, and settling those intercompany transactions on a timely basis would become a headache for treasury groups throughout the organization."