Anyone who has followed the Alexander Hamilton Awards over time understands that achieving best-in-class treasury practices is an ongoing endeavor. Even the most significant and impactful project will soon be ready for additional improvement, as organizational knowledge, technology, and staffing evolve.

For Bristol Myers Squibb, the winner of the 2023 Alexander Hamilton Gold Award in Technology Excellence, continuous improvement is a core treasury mindset. "One key factor in the success of this initiative was ensuring that we were open to change and looking at the art of the possible," explains Sandra Ramos-Alves, Bristol Myers Squibb senior vice president and treasurer. "We listened to all the voices around the table and embraced what everyone had to say. That was key to successfully leveraging the technologies we deployed."

• Gold Award:  Bristol Myers Squibb's award-winning initiative involved the development of new processes and deployment of new technologies after an acquisition doubled the company's size. Among other projects, the initiative involved building a treasury data lake that provides new insight into bank-counterparty exposures, foreign exchange (FX) risk, and many other key treasury data points.

"The journey is far from complete," Ramos-Alves says. "The business continues to get more complex, so streamlining processes will be an ongoing effort. We will continue to reassess processes and technologies as challenges arise, and re-engineer them when we need to."

Congratulations to the Bristol Myers Squibb team on their outstanding initiative! And thank you to the judges of our 2023 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; Paul Galloway, senior adviser at Strategic Treasurer; and Marie Hollein, former president and CEO of Financial Executives International.