Drawing data from the same well.

• Position: Interview with Merck treasurer Caroline Dorsa - Includes related article on use of Internet in corporate treasury department - Treasury Management - Interview

Are you still struggling to free your treasury department from "transaction" mode? Read how Merck's new data warehouse lets treasury spend more time advising its line customers.

Three years ago, Merck's operating units had a hodgepodge of stand-alone information systems, says Caroline Dorsa, treasurer of Merck in Whitehouse Station, N.J. But now that finance and management information systems have developed a central information repository, everyone at Merck sees a consistent set of financial data. In an interview with Financial Executive, Dorsa describes how the data repository, the nexus of an overall financial re-engineering effort, allows treasury to get out of the error-correction business and advance to a more consultative role. You can reach Dorsa at (908) 423-5353.

FINANCIAL EXECUTIVE: Can you sketch out the different components of your information system?

DORSA: Sure. We use our system for both historical and projected purposes. Its core is a database from which we can generate and create reports based on the details and specifications we want. On the reporting side, we have tremendous flexibility to drill down through information layers and view different dimensions. For example, we can drill down in the interest expense area from global interest expense, to interest expense in Europe, to interest expense in France. We can also view interest expense across divisions, entities, regions, markets or departments.

In treasury, we also do entity-based planning and forecasting. The system allows us to look at the entity balance sheets and profit-and-loss statements over a forecast period, both at the lowest level of detail at the entity, or rolled up. That's very helpful when we're doing modeling for our various subsidiaries and want to ensure we're capturing the information correctly. And, of course, it's also important for the reporting purposes of the corporation as a whole.

FINANCIAL EXECUTIVE: Is the database companywide, or is it limited to the treasury area?

DORSA: The database contains worldwide detailed financial and operational historical information and can be accessed companywide. Anyone with proper authorization can tap into the database from anywhere in the world and view the data they've been granted authority to review. Treasury is a key customer and has played an important role in designing the database and in the integration to our area-specific systems, such as the entity planning model.

FINANCIAL EXECUTIVE: What made you decide to revamp your information systems?

DORSA: For the finance area to remain an effective partner with the other areas within Merck, we needed to develop business processes and information systems that delivered timely information throughout the company, as well as the ability to respond quickly to information demands brought on by the challenges of our changing industry. This, when coupled with recent advances in technology, provided the perfect opportunity to redesign our business processes and information systems. We also saw opportunities to streamline redundant systems that had evolved over time within different divisions.

About three years ago, we started a major re-engineering effort, an initiative spearheaded by the controller's area. Our...