In a business's early days, optimizing treasury capabilities may take a backseat to more pressing organizational needs. Sometimes this means that, down the line, a large and complex company realizes it is operating much less efficiently than it could be. And in many cases, the adoption of the right technologies can bring efficiencies in treasury that were previously lacking.

"Treasury is a lot of fun because you get to tackle problems that are unique and challenging," says Yogesh Tupe, vice president and treasurer for executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles. "But when my team was spending all their time on manually manipulating data in spreadsheets, that was pulling them away from the fun part. We wanted to have a computer do the repetitive tasks."