Watching Every Dollar: How a Pharma Giant Tracks Global Cash Exposure in Real Time

A series of banking collapses in recent years, ranging from regional institutions to multinational banks, has exposed a hard truth for global enterprises: liquidity blind spots are no longer tolerable. As interest rates rise and geopolitical tensions ripple through financial systems, the ability to see, in real time, where every dollar sits across global accounts is not a luxury; it's a matter of resilience. Few know this better than Karunakar Grandhe, a seasoned product leader at a major global pharmaceutical company, who has spent the last two decades at the intersection of finance, IT, and cloud architecture.

His recent work, leading the design and implementation of a Treasury analytics platform, illustrates how organizations are rethinking cash visibility, not just as a finance problem but as a strategic capability. “Real-time cash exposure tracking is not just financial control,” he says. “It is a strategic enabler.”

As product manager and technical lead, Karunakar took on a complex challenge: unify fragmented treasury data scattered across banking partners, currencies, and regions, and make it actionable. “One of the most critical challenges in global finance is maintaining visibility into enterprise-wide cash exposure,” he explains, “especially when operating across multiple currencies, banking partners, and regulatory environments.”

This project was about more than just dashboards. It required engineering a foundation that could handle messy, multilingual, and constantly changing financial data. He led efforts to ingest and process global banking data using AWS S3 and to cleanse it through a Data Transformation and Integration platform. The goal was not only technical accuracy but real-time insight.

One of the most overlooked hurdles in global treasury management is language. Bank names and business partner references often appear in different languages and formats, creating noise and inconsistency. Karunakar tackled this with an innovative use of AWS Translation Services. “Normalizing foreign-language bank names and business partner names sounds simple,” he says, “but in practice, it’s one of the most stubborn data quality issues in global banking.” The impact was immediate. By standardizing and aligning these data points, the system could present a clean, real-time view of global cash across continents in a single dashboard.

For him, the true value of the system lay not in its technical novelty but in its operational impact. “The confidence it gave Treasury leaders to make informed decisions, that’s what mattered,” he emphasizes. Whether Treasury needed to assess counterparty risk, reallocate funds, or prepare for macroeconomic shocks, the platform offered something rare in legacy treasury systems: agility.

By enabling visibility into cash on hand by bank, region, and currency, and surfacing business partner exposure and risk concentrations, the system allowed leadership to proactively manage liquidity. “It wasn’t just about building a tool,” he adds. “It was about aligning IT, Finance, and Treasury around a shared vision of financial transparency.”

Few transformation projects succeed without trust across departments. For Karunakar, one of the most rewarding aspects of the initiative was how it broke down silos. Treasury, IT, and finance teams weren’t just stakeholders; they became collaborators.

He defined the product roadmap and led the integration of data pipelines that brought accuracy and consistency to global reports. With Microsoft Power BI layered on top, the platform delivered intuitive visualizations that eliminated the need for manual reporting and enabled smarter liquidity planning. “It empowered Treasury leaders to act faster and with more precision,” he says. “That kind of operational alignment is rare, and it’s where true impact happens.”

Today’s financial climate isn’t just unstable, it’s unpredictable. Currency fluctuations, shifting interest rates, and political disruptions demand systems that aren’t just reactive, but predictive. His system brought a level of foresight to enterprise finance that positioned IT not just as a service provider, but as a strategic partner.

“Proactive risk mitigation starts with visibility,” he notes. “If you don’t know where your cash is, you can’t protect it, let alone use it strategically.”

As the industry evolves, Karunakar sees real-time analytics as the baseline and not the ceiling for future Treasury systems. “We’re moving toward an era where finance needs to be both automated and adaptive,” he says. He believes the next frontier lies in incorporating AI to surface patterns, forecast liquidity risks, and even simulate responses to financial stress events.

But the foundation, he insists, is data integrity. “Without clean, timely data, the most advanced tools are meaningless,” he warns.

“Treasury teams must be equipped to respond to geopolitical shifts, banking crises, and liquidity risks with agility and confidence,” he emphasizes. “That starts with building systems that are transparent, collaborative, and real-time.”

As financial uncertainty is the new norm, Karunakar's work provides a template for how businesses can get ahead not only by monitoring the numbers, but by interpreting what they signify, at the moments that count. By rethinking how a global pharmaceutical industry leader manages cash exposure, he's demonstrated that contemporary treasury is not all about control; it's about empowering smarter, faster, and more agile decision-making throughout the organization.