ber-treasurers–men and women who are seizing more strategic roles at their companies. These extra job duties comprise the considerable "to do" list on Warren's desk, plus a wide range of other strategic duties–planning, mergers and acquisitions, tax, pensions and consumer finance.

And a new breed requires a new name. For example, Jim Newfrock, former treasurer at Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. in New York, is now the consulting firm's co-leader of the global risk practice. "My former role as treasurer was 'cash and other projects,'" Newfrock comments. "It was the 'other projects' that helped me rise to the position I'm in today–not that this organization hangs its hat on titles." Among Newfrock's atypical achievements as treasurer: establishing the firm's global crisis management capabilities and its employee retention program.

"Treasurers of large corporations are evolving at light speed," notes Daniel Rosenstein, head of U.S. corporate sales for Global Transaction Banking-Cash Management at Deutsche Bank. Rosenstein suggests chief treasury officer and senior vice president for treasury and risk management as possible new titles. "From their

roots as managers of liquidity, short-term investments and daily cash flow, treasurers have branched into working capital evangelists, enterprise-risk and insurance czars, global real estate portfolio moguls and complex interlinked financial system administrators," he riffs. "They extend their reach into accounts payable and receivable and influence the functioning and success of shared service centers."

Craig Jeffery, managing director of consultancy Strategic Treasurer LLC, offers up "vice president of finance" as a fitting title. "It's the wild card title, the catchall" when other titles don't adequately describe the job, he explains. Corning Inc. treasurer Mark Rogus agrees that the vice president of finance title makes sense. "Typically, that is the 'title in waiting' to become the CFO," he explains. "Certainly, the added responsibilities and the ability to be broader and more contributory at a strategic level give treasurers a leg up to become their company's CFO–or the CFO somewhere else."

But whether or not a consensus is reached on an appropriate new title, the reality for treasurers in the 21st century is that this pursuit is no longer going to be optional–if in fact treasurers want to continue to be considered part of senior management. "Traditional treasury is gradually disappearing," says Stephen Baird, project manager at consultancy Treasury Strategies Inc. "Increasing automation [of treasury functions] and the outsourcing of processes to banks has changed the game. In 10 years, if all a treasurer does is manage the cash position and investments, they won't be in a vice president level position. There really won't be any significant role left to play."

Fortunately, there are a bevy of new functional frontiers perfectly suited for a treasurer's skill set. Principal among them: enterprise risk management; working capital management; corporate governance; and shared service centers. While treasurers have a piece of all of these areas, all require input from disciplines outside a traditional treasurer's domain. Of course, that means other executives may be eying these areas for growth as well. "There is definite jockeying going on with respect to who will manage things like shared service centers, enterprise risk and working capital," says Strategic Treasurer's Jeffery. "If treasurers focus only on cash management and securing funding, the best parts of being a treasurer [could be] split up between the controller, the shared service head and the CFO. Treasurers have to take a strategic view now, or their world will shrink."

Many treasurers are doing just that. According to the 2005 Corporate Treasury Survey conducted by Treasury Strategies, 61% of treasurers say they are taking the lead in decision-making in the area of working capital, with 35% of respondents assuming responsibility for working capital metrics and reporting. Another 15%–12% higher than the year before–say they have reporting authority over M&A, an area that carries a significant component of risk management these days because of the additional due diligence required in the wake of more rigorous regulatory standards.

Treasurers also are making headway in enterprise risk management, with 20.4% of treasurers in the survey having ERM reporting responsibility, compared to 16.1% for internal audit, 4.4% for controllers and 5.8% for chief risk officers. Only CFOs surpass treasurers in ERM responsibility, but Baird reckons many of these CFOs "are probably delegating ERM management to their treasurers."

ENTERPRISE RISK MANAGEMENT

For treasurers, taking charge of ERM is intricately connected with the demands of Sarbanes-Oxley, new financial regulations such as FAS 133, and the COSO II framework detailing ERM concepts and components. While treasury typically is in charge of the insurance function, absorbing responsibility for the full gamut of enterprise risks–strategic, financial, operational, supply chain, political, compliance and other corporate threats to shareholder value–may be extraordinary, but it's a logical expansion to move from merely securing adequate coverage for liability exposure to identifying, measuring and mitigating risk. "Treasurers are in a great position to compare different risks–for example, interest rate risks relative to commodity price risks and whether these risks offset a foreign exchange risk," asserts Anthony J. Carfang, a Chicago-based partner at Treasury Strategies. "In more traditional organizations, the high correlations of these risks might be underappreciated."

Few executives are as well positioned as a treasurer to identify the risks inherent in counter transactions, Carfang contends. "While treasurers don't run the businesses, they have the information on the underlying variables via technology, metrics and dashboards," he explains. His colleague, Baird, concurs: "Where treasurers add value is their ability to evaluate a company's overall exposure to different risks by doing risk-mapping exercises that analyze scenarios, co-variances and correlations. Most treasurers are very comfortable with mathematical concepts."

Treasury's knowledge of risk transfer solutions like insurance and hedging products also put it in good stead to lead ERM efforts, and its centralized position gives it the ability to reach out across an organization to build an ERM infrastructure. Rogus of Corning heads up ERM at the $3.85 billion manufacturer of specialty glassware, fiber optics and ceramics. "We started at ground zero, forming a multidisciplinary risk council, and then building a process to collect risks from the bottom up, assess them for frequency and financial severity, aggregate them to see if there are interdependencies, and then use that as part of our strategic planning activities to drive thinking around our risk profile," Rogus explains.

What Rogus doesn't do is dictate how business segments must mitigate risks. "We have a strong decentralized culture, so while we may say to a business, 'This is your risk profile,' we let them decide on the risk mitigation plan and have them report back to us," he says. "It is not my job to own the risks. We're trying to help you understand you have this risk and need to form a range of alternatives to deal with it."

Another treasurer with ERM responsibility is Joseph Witt of Ferguson Enterprises Inc., a Newport News, Va.-based distributor of plumbing supplies, pipe valves and other industrial supplies with $7 billion in revenues last year. A former corporate controller with a CPA, Witt's ERM duties include identifying, assessing, quantifying and mitigating the broad range of strategic, operational, financial and other risks confronting the company. While Witt took the initiative when it came to expanding his risk oversight to include ERM, Rogus from Corning says he was asked by his CFO to head up the effort because of his prior experience in banking. "There was the belief that my competencies better suited me to the role" than other Corning executives, he says.

WORKING CAPITAL MANAGEMENT

For several years now, working capital management has been a key job for most treasurers, even though only a handful are actually in charge of the two main components–accounts payable and accounts receivable. Although treasury is beginning to assume some direct oversight of these accounting functions–led by enterprising treasurers such as Jesse Greene of IBM Corp.–the biggest change has come via automated solutions, which not only have provided treasurers a view into A/P and A/R flow, but allowed them to create more effective mandates to dramatically alter that flow.

In accounts payable, the rule of thumb had always been to play the float. But poor returns on short-term investments means that companies no longer gain very much by waiting 60 or 90 days to pay a bill and investing those funds in money markets. Thanks to new A/P software from providers such as Pleasanton, Calif.-based Xign Corp., treasurers are now helping their companies cash in on discounts for paying early, which provide much more substantial gains. "A/P is all about liquidity management," says George Fan, Xign vice president of marketing. "The magnitude of the value one can create through managing the payable side through the working capital equation is significant. On average, if you can drive 15% of a company's spend through discount programs at an average of 2%, you can move the needle 1% to 5% on earnings."

Fan sees treasury as the logical place to handle payables because of its cash flow knowledge. "Treasury sets the working capital policy and is the one that knows how much cash is available to be used for driving discounts," he explains. "They know what the hurdle rates are for getting returns on cash. In the old world, early pay discounts were the exception and not the norm. Today, because of technology underpinnings, we have more opportunities to take advantage of early pay discounts, which have the ability to impact earnings and cash in a material way."

Another example of the ability of treasurers to affect A/P and A/R is the variety of card programs that treasurers often oversee. On the accounts payable side, purchasing cards have gone a long way toward helping treasurers to be more effective working capital managers. But on the accounts receivable side, some treasurers are now stepping into areas that once were the domain of sales. Take Rebecca Flick, vice president and treasurer of The Home Depot Inc., who heads up her Atlanta-based company's consumer credit facility. "We have several different consumer credit products, such as private label credit cards for consumers and businesses," Flick says. "Neither card is on our balance sheet or part of our receivables–they're on the accounts of our banking partners, who bear the liability." She adds that treasury at the $73 billion home building supplies concern is currently testing the concept of offering construction loans to consumers.

Ferguson's Witt also created a new post for himself last year as head of consumer financing, responsible for developing and introducing Ferguson's private label credit cards. "We have 270 high-end showrooms around the country where people can buy high-end products like Viking ranges," Witt says. "I came up with the idea of a credit card that the salespeople in the branches could use as a sales enhancing tool. Ninety percent of our sales are internal credit, and I thought this would have strategic value." Management bought the concept, which went into effect six months ago. Consumers wielding the credit card are given six months interest free to pay for items they purchase at the showrooms. Witt's brainchild is a winner. "Our average Visa and MasterCard purchase is $418 and our average American Express purchase is $1,315; meanwhile, the average Ferguson Bath and Kitchen Gallery card purchase exceeds $2,200," Witt notes. His newest idea: a home equity line available to customers at showrooms (scheduled for introduction later this year). "We're starting to feel like a bank at treasury," he says.

Treasury Strategies' Carfang notes that treasurers can help companies enhance their competitive differentiation by leveraging financial strengths. "Treasurers have an understanding that finance is not simply a residual of the operation, but is in fact a driver of shareholder value," he explains.

SHARED SERVICE CENTERS

At Diebold, Warren and his staff already oversee A/P and A/R through the company's shared service center. Promising an efficient way to centralize traditional back office functions, shared service centers have been around for more than a decade. Diebold's center, which focuses on North American transactions, takes customarily decentralized functions like A/P and A/R from the field and centralizes them under assistant treasurer Tim McDannold. The service center he oversees handles other transactional functions as well, including contract administration, order entry, data management, credit collection and billing. "We're considered the global process owners for these varied functions," says McDannold, also a Diebold vice president and a CPA. "They're brought into one location where we handle all disbursements, which has helped us to increase efficiencies and reduce staff by 40%. We get a dramatic benefit by having a centralized back room operation." In 2004 Diebold won an Alexander Hamilton Award for the order-to-cash function, which resides in the shared service center.

OTHER NEW FUNCTIONS

Some treasurers are adding to their responsibilities in the tax and pension areas or tacking on duties related to M&A activity. Home Depot's Flick, for example, bears responsibility for the investment banking and post-merger finance integration activities at her company. "We've completed 10 acquisitions in just the last year and it has been great fun to be involved in something this strategic," she says. "When we buy a company, we need to integrate the financial systems and processes into the mother ship … to be sure we have visibility into the value we're creating off these acquisitions, versus our valuation assumptions. I identify where we may miss the boat and how we can learn from that."

While many treasurers have had responsibility for pensions for more than a decade, oversight is increasing in anticipation of new pension plan rules currently under debate in Congress. "The dollars involved are so large that [pension] really begs to have a financial perspective, a set of skills a treasurer can bring to bear," says Henry Waszkowski, managing director at the Atlanta-based consulting organization Treasury Performance Group Inc.

More treasurers also are handling tax. "Tax people love to find arrangements to double dip–get the interest expense deducted in two different locations–making it exceedingly difficult to get the cash out," says Jeffrey Wallace, a managing partner at the Chicago-based consultancy Greenwich Treasury Advisors LLC. "Having the treasurer responsible for tax can lead to substantial benefits because treasury and tax are working together instead of against each other."

Diebold's Warren was a pioneer in heading up tax 15 years ago. Asked what's driving the trend, he replies that "traditional tax people tend to report to the CFO and the CFO has a huge job. He or she has time to manage people, but not necessarily get involved in the business decisions involving tax. Tax also lends itself easily to the kind of work we do"–which these days could be anything and everything.