In maintaining a healthy risk management program, visibility is vital.

Whether they're facing threats to operations, volatility in cash flows, currency swings, or other exposures, companies can't effectively manage what they don't fully understand. But organizations that do have visibility into the risks they face can mitigate the possible impact to their business.

That is the key theme of this year's Alexander Hamilton Awards in Risk Management: More information leads to better risk management decision-making. And, as in both of our winning projects, technology is often key to gaining the visibility risk managers need.

• Silver Award:  The treasury team at medical device maker Medtronic was grappling with their ability to effectively manage foreign exchange (FX) risks via processes that were largely manual and spreadsheet-driven. Medtronic implemented a new currency risk management tool and built an innovative three-way integration with the company's treasury management system and FX trading platform. "It sounds like a dream compared with what we had before," says Tim Husnik, senior treasury director.
• Gold Award:  The corporate insurance team at Bristol Myers Squibb is responsible for managing all the company's insurance policies, with the exception only of the employee health plan. Yet managing the insurance required for clinical trials around the world was taking 90 percent of the team's time. They revamped all the processes around clinical trial insurance and built a custom application to streamline information sharing.

"This tool puts us in a better position to make sure clinical trials can start on time," reports Henry Huseby, director, corporate insurances, for Bristol Myers Squibb. In fact, he adds, the initiative was so successful that "IT has recently launched a number of other technology-automation initiatives for other treasury processes."