Twelve months ago, the treasury team at Gilead Sciences, Inc., a fast-growing biopharmaceutical business that develops and produces treatments for some of the world's deadliest diseases, faced some critical challenges. The company brings in close to $10 billion in annual revenue through operations in more than 30 countries. Yet its small treasury staff was spending more time on transaction processing than on analysis, and manual data entry put the company at risk for errors.

Treasurer Brad Vollmer decided to revamp his department's technology infrastructure to automate many of his team's core duties. He worked with Melissa Cameron, a Deloitte principal who specializes in treasury, to integrate cash management and foreign exchange (FX) systems from forecasting to settlement to accounting. Now many of the previously tedious treasury tasks are automated, reducing the chances of errors and freeing up Vollmer's staff for more value-added work. Treasury & Risk sat down with Vollmer and Cameron to discuss the project and its results.

T&R: What were the challenges that your treasury team faced in your legacy environment?