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Investment in IT is always a tricky issue for treasury departments. How can you judge its effectiveness, and how can you justify the outlay when budgets are under pressure? Trema's financial services program at Finland's Local Government Pensions Institution (LGPI) might provide the answer. The LPGI has over [currency symbol]13 billion in assets under management and decided to switch to Trema's Finance Kit solution in January 2002 in a bid to consolidate all its financial operations on a unified IT system. And to prove its worth and make a name for itself, Trema asked Financial Insights, an independent analyst, to investigate whether Trema's claims of cost-savings and efficiency could actually stand up to closer scrutiny. Trema heaved a collective sigh of relief when Financial Insights gave an unequivocal thumbs-up. Back-office workload, according to the independent analysis, was reduced by up to 40% by improving the flow of transactions between traders and the back-office. Real-time information seems to be the key, resulting in a 20% fall in the middle-office workload. Within 18 months the LPGI made back the initial outlay on the software and Financial Insights predicts a return on investment of 77% over the next five years. This news will bring cheer to treasury departments across the world in the throes of decision-making over IT investment. It is a crucial area for treasury, but like many other areas of business, is often over-looked due to the difficulty of calculating the investment benefits. "We knew the product had a positive effect on our operations and performance right from the start," says Juha Soininen, portfolio analyst at LPGI, "but the knowledge that, under the assumptions in the study, we can expect a 77% return on investment over the next five years, is still very impressive." Trema's Finance package is a real-time STP system for treasury, risk, cash and asset management system.