For as long as anyone can remember, the University of California, with its far-flung 10 campuses and affiliated foundations and alumni organizations, has managed its cash in what Richard Powell, senior banking manager for the UC Banking Services Group, calls "a hodgepodge," with bits and pieces at each campus. The $20 billion institution, which collectively handles $300 million to $400 million moving in and out daily, used Excel spreadsheets and bank supplied communication software to manage cash. Each campus and organization had to track what they were doing each day and provide estimates of their funding needs. Communications with the university's central treasury operation were manual, involving phones, faxes and e-mail.

"It was a home-grown desk operation, held together by bailing wire," says Powell, with a laugh. All that's changing, though, thanks to a new Web-based automated and integrated cash management system designed by eForce Global, Inc.–with U.S. offices in Sunnyvale, Calif., and Houston as well as Europe and India–which is debuting its Treasury Sciences product at the University of California.

"An organization like the University of California with its many separate campuses is very similar to a corporation with largely independent subsidiaries," says eForce Global Vice President Ravi Pande. "U of C has thousands of endpoints and hundreds of system users, five banks, and everything from checks to armored carriers."