As deputy treasurer at $156.7 billion General Electric, Dennis Sweeney has a string of technology achievements under his belt: He implemented the first Web-enabled treasury workstation, pioneered corporate use of SWIFT and has been a key advocate of the TWIST BSB standard for electronic invoicing of international bank fees.

These days he sees working to improve corporates' communications with their banks as his best shot at improving productivity. “Having access to information and being able to process that through my bank in a straight-through process is where I'm going to get value,” Sweeney says. “These days, it's much less 'can I negotiate a better price to clear a check,' than 'can I get out of clearing checks at all, can I move people to e-payments.'”