Technology moves in one direction: forward. These days, the advances in treasury technology include providing companies with strategic insights, embracing big data and the cloud, and making it easier for companies to handle everything from payments to bank account management.

Joe Siu, director of financial risk management for Chatham Financial in Kennett Square, Pa., says the goals of treasury technology have changed. “The innovations now are more about how functionality is delivered instead of what is delivered,” Siu says.

While the past decade has been dominated by a drive for efficiency and automation, the next decade “will have more to do with delivering strategic insight and improving competitiveness,” he predicts. A company with sophisticated currency risk management, for example, might be able to win more business by selling in a different currency than its competitors.