2022 Alexander Hamilton Awards: Treasury Transformation

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.”

Moreover, Liu says, the treasury team expected that “more change would be coming in the future, and a piecemeal approach to treasury improvements would not prepare us for what was going to happen.”

Each award-winning organization built a world-class treasury team, while also laying the groundwork for ongoing process improvements to support businesses that continue to evolve:

• Silver Award:  Turkish glass giant Sisecam saw many opportunities to improve efficiency in its largely decentralized treasury processes. Not only did the company decide to deploy a treasury management system to automatically consolidate information on cash balances and forecasts from subsidiaries around the world, but it also restructured the treasury function, creating a shared-service center and a fintech group designed to serve as a bridge between the treasury team and financial technologies available in the marketplace.
• Gold Award:  As demand for telecom technologies exploded around the world, the treasury group at Ciena recognized impending challenges with cash visibility, payments, foreign exchange (FX), and intercompany transactions. They considered addressing each issue on a one-off basis, but decided instead to undertake a major treasury transformation that would prepare their function to better support Ciena’s global business for years to come.

By undertaking these transformational treasury projects, both organizations set themselves up for future success. “As treasury professionals, we always need to know how much cash we have, where it is located, and where it’s needed to fund operations,” Liu explains. “This is the goal of every treasury group. Some use spreadsheets to build this perspective, but it’s much more efficient when you can minimize your manual inputs. That means we have more time to work on the strategic aspects of supporting the ongoing growth of Ciena Corporation.”

Congratulations to Ciena and Sisecam for their outstanding initiatives! And thank you to the judges of our 2022 awards program: Jean-Francois Heitz, former deputy CFO and treasurer of Microsoft; Erik Smolders, former treasurer of Ingram Micro and a vice president in Deloitte’s Global Treasury Advisory Services practice; Craig Jeffery, managing partner of Strategic Treasurer; and Marie Hollein, former president and CEO of Financial Executives International.

Finally, thank you very much to Kyriba, C2FO, TIS, ION Treasury, and ICD for sponsoring the 2022 Alexander Hamilton Awards program.

You can learn more about the Treasury Transformation award-winning projects by watching the on-demand webcast during which we presented the awards.

Information on our other 2022 Alexander Hamilton Awards is available, as well:

• Best Practices in Restricted/Emerging Markets: View the on-demand webcast, or read about the projects.
• Working Capital & Payments: View the on-demand webcast, or read about the projects.
• Liquidity Management: View the on-demand webcast, or read about the project.
• And register today for our live webcast recognizing the Alexander Hamilton Small Company Excellence Award winners, which will take place on July 20 at 11 a.m. ET.

Treasury & Risk will present the rest of our 2022 Alexander Hamilton Awards in a series of articles and webcasts throughout the year. Stay tuned!