Two years ago, Chicago-based Exelon Corp. was the largest nuclear operator in the United States, and also the nation's largest utility company by customers served, with more than 32,000 employees serving over 10 million customers. Unfortunately, as its business had grown and evolved over the years, its treasury technology environment had fallen far behind.

"We were using a treasury system that was beyond end of life," explains Gregory Tate, the director of financial planning and analysis (FP&A) and treasury financial transformation. The system was more than a decade old and was no longer supported by the vendor. Plus, Tate adds, "it had become highly customized over time, and we were using it for activities that it wasn't necessarily designed to do, such as accounting entries. That was producing some additional risk for the organization. And from a maintenance standpoint, the customization was pretty cumbersome." In fact, the solution was challenged to effectively complete even core treasury functions.

"We had major bottlenecks in treasury operations," explains Paul Lehmbeck, treasury transformation lead. "Through the years, our business had expanded with the addition of both utilities and unregulated businesses. Each of these business units came to Exelon with its own banking partners and its own software environment, so our technology infrastructure became a web of complexity. As the organization grew, our treasury system just couldn't handle that complexity."