Art Lorenz could have survived with only two people in his treasury at Hunter Douglas, but just barely.

Acquisitions had tripled the sales volume over the past several years, but the $1.3 billion North American operations of the maker of window coverings had automated certain processes, so it was difficult, although not impossible, for its treasurer and the one other treasury professional on his team to cover whatever treasury needed to do. But that was all they could do. "We had 50 divisions, each with its own controller and its own bank accounts. We were struggling just to keep up with the essential daily activities," he recalls.

Lorenz started wondering what value he could add to the Upper Saddle River, N.J.-based business with just one more set of hands. After making his case, he added veteran Mike Dunn from Ingersoll Rand Co. as treasury manager. With an extra set of hands, Lorenz was able to address the real problems–like starting to reduce the number of controlled disbursement accounts from thirty-something to four or five. But why stop there? In the year since he hired Dunn, Lorenz has also confirmed a decision to switch to Chase Paymentech for credit card processing, after an analysis by Dunn showed lower transaction costs. Dunn is now reviewing bank availability schedules and has installed remote check deposit where Hunter Douglas does not have lockboxes. Lorenz even has him taking a second look to see if further bank consolidation is possible.