It seems surprising that Laurel Meissner, globalcontroller and senior vice president at Aon Corp., likes to travelin her free time, given that she has spent the last two yearsjetting among many of the 130 countries in which Aon has apresence. But then, Meissner's a people person.

She would have to be, given that her primary responsibility isto get Aon's 1,000 finance department employees to work on the samesystems and use the same processes. The insurance brokerage, whichhad $8.5 billion in 2010 revenue, is seeking to control costs andstreamline finance processes by integrating about 400 acquisitionsthat it's made over time, including its two most recent and amongthe largest, the purchases of Hewitt Associates in 2010 andBenfield Group in 2008.

“That's what my objective was when I came in,” Meissner says.“How do I take a 1,000-person finance organization and create aworldwide focus? It's part of the reason I came here. It was a ripeopportunity for us, and where we were in our history. I found thatvery exciting.”

Challenging, too, given that traditionally, Chicago-based Aon'sapproach was to “let well enough alone,” as Meissner says, when itcame to integrating acquisitions. But even as she changes that,Meissner has been careful to make her team feel that they are partof something and valued, and that they have opportunities to learnand grow.

When she started at Aon, Meissner borrowed a page from herformer employer, Motorola, and had all of the members of her teamcomplete a self-assessment that allows them to list their existing skills and whatthey're interested in learning in the future. The information wasused to match employees with opportunities, and so far about 35people have moved to different roles, often in different locations,to Chicago from London, for example, or from Chicago to Mexico Cityand Hong Kong.

“I believe that an organization will live or die with itspeople,” she says. “They need to be successful, or I'm not.”

Meissner joined Motorola in 2000 and her final position therewas chief accounting officer and senior vice president. Earlier,she served as CFO at Initiate Systems and Cruise Technologies, andspent 17 years at KPMG.

Her experience at Motorola allowed her to see the efficienciesthat can be gained by having a centralized finance team, instead ofseparate ways of doing things in each country.

“Watching what my predecessors [at Motorola] had done was reallya big piece in formulating from my perspective how I would do thatif I were starting with a blank sheet of paper,” Meissner says.

Come January, Meissner will have moved Aon's 19 largest countryunits, which account for 90% of the company's revenue, to commonsystems and processes. Just 111 more to go, which should make thisyear and the next very busy, with yet more travel. But Meissner isenergized.

“You could just take a model and start slashing costs, but youcould move too fast,” she says. “The people piece of it is reallycritical. It requires you do is take into account the culture ofthe organizations, and more specifically the people. Our revenuesare tied directly to our people.”

See Treasury & Risk's complete 2011 list of the100 Most Influential People in Finance here.