Even a global company that has developed sophisticated processes across most of treasury can have blind spots. A couple of years ago, Mastercard's treasury function used manual and Excel-based workflows to manage corporate debt issues, investment of excess cash, and foreign exchange (FX) hedges' reconciliation and recordkeeping processes.

The company was using spreadsheets to track all aspects of its debt. “As our business grew, we went from having no bonds outstanding to having several issues with different maturities,” says Joshua Krongold, vice president of corporate treasury for Mastercard. “Interest payments were due at different times of the year, and an individual on the team that issued the bond was fully responsible for knowing when to make each payment. We risked making late payments because managing the details of our debt was so cumbersome in Excel.”