For more than two decades, the Treasury & Risk Alexander Hamilton Awards have highlighted the achievements of innovative corporate treasury, finance, and risk management teams. The technologies that these organizations utilize have changed pretty dramatically over the decades, but the creativity in leveraging available tools has not.

This year's winners in the Technology Excellence category demonstrate the ways in which technology can streamline treasury processes and create dramatic improvements in efficiency. "It's very important to challenge the norms," says Steve Huse, director of client reporting for investment firm Baird. "Treasury needs to think creatively and partner with internal colleagues and internal clients to come up with ideas for better treasury solutions, and then find a vendor that will help bring those ideas to fruition."

Here's how this year's winners challenged norms to find outsized treasury success:

• Bronze Award: The treasury team at Stanley Black & Decker embarked on a wholesale overhaul of antiquated technologies and processes. They built a business case for a new treasury management system and payment workflow; as a result, they now have far more time for strategic activities.
• Silver Award: Baird wanted to automate the G/L posting of customer deposits into specific investment accounts. Treasury staff collaborated with their treasury management system vendor to build a highly customized solution that leverages application programming interfaces (APIs) to streamline receivables processes.
• Gold Award: Microsoft wanted to expand the geographic scope of its extended payment terms (XPT) program, while also bringing the customer experience for XPT participants into line with Microsoft customers who utilize standard payment terms. The initiative undertaken by the Worldwide Payment Solutions team was innovative both in the technologies developed and deployed, and in a project management approach that had a brand-new treasury solution built and in use just four months after the project's kickoff.

"The times have changed," says Catherine Grant-Alston, director of global cash operations for Stanley Black & Decker. "Technology is an enabler, and if you do not automate, you will get left behind."

Congratulations to all three organizations for leveraging leading-edge technologies to improve efficiencies and effectiveness of their treasury processes—and developing new technologies where prepackaged solutions could not meet their specific needs.

Thank you to the judges of this year's competition, who selected these two projects from an outstanding group of submissions: Jean-Francois Heitz, former deputy CFO and treasurer of Microsoft; Craig Jeffery, managing partner of Strategic Treasurer; Marie Hollein, former president and CEO of Financial Executives International; and Prashant Patri, a principal in Deloitte's Global Treasury Advisory Services practice.

Finally, thank you very much to GTreasury, Citi, and ION for sponsoring this year's Alexander Hamilton Awards program. Stay tuned for webcasts and articles throughout the year recognizing the winners in our other six categories, as well as the winner of the 2019 Alexander Hamilton Overall Excellence Award.

• Register now for our May 22 event recognizing the winners in the Working Capital & Payments category.
• And replay today's webcast honoring the three winning projects in Technology Excellence by registering to view the on-demand version.