Treasuries are undergoingtechnological transformations to enable their corporations to growand prosper in a difficult global marketplace. Take Itron, a technology company that buildselectric, gas, water and thermal energy meters for utilities. Its2007 acquisition of Actaris doubled its size overnight andcatapulted the company, now with $2.4 billion in annual revenue,into complex global operations and exposures. Since the merger,Itron conducts business in 130 countries using 40-plus currenciesthrough a highly decentralized structure.

The merger was a wake-up call for what had been a basic domestictreasury function. Itron kicked off a finance and treasuryreinvention by adopting leading-edge solutions, including migratingto a single global instance of an Oracle ERP system, implementingspecialized applications from FiREapps, Reval and FXall, and an IT2treasury workstation with SWIFT messaging integration.

Meanwhile, companies that have completed technologytransformations are finding tactical ways to move to mobile access,cloud hosting, smarter data mining and reporting, tightermanagement of FX risks, and preparing for electronic bank accountmanagement (eBAM).