The Five-Year Itch

Next to preparing the annual budget, the exercise that many CFOs dread most is creating a five-year plan. The document can take months to craft, is impossible to get right, and generally becomes obsolete within six months. Why, then, are companies still wedded to it?The answers are varied. Some C...

By Kris Frieswick • Feb. 1, 2003

The Big Squeeze: Our Ninth Annual Cost Management Survey

It’s not for lack of trying.Faced with continued economic turmoil and uncertain revenue streams, companies everywhere are scrambling to cut costs as much as they can. But because of the speed and ferocity of this particular downturn relative to the free spending of the peak boom years, those effo...

By Lori Calabro • Feb. 1, 2003

Explore the Trendline➔

Tax policy shifts: What CFOs need to know to stay ahead

Discover how evolving tax policies are creating new opportunities and challenges for CFOs.

By CFO.com staff

Data Data Everywhere

The goal of business intelligence is a simple one: to turn data into information. In theory, that digital alchemy should help managers and employees make quick, well-informed decisions.There’s one hitch, though. Too much information — or the wrong information — can leave employees awash in data.J...

By Russ Banham • Jan. 1, 2003

The Search for Intelligence

Sometimes, getting smarter requires a little dumbing down.Take the case of Deltek Systems, the Herndon, Virginia-based application software provider. A few years back, management at Deltek wanted to improve the way workers made decisions. After looking at several approaches, Deltek executives dec...

By Russ Banham • Jan. 1, 2003

Business Intelligence Software Vendors

Actuate Corp.Actuate Information Delivery PlatformAllen Systems Group Inc.Report.Web, Safari InfoServer, Safari InfoToolAlphaBlox CorpFinancial Planning and Analysis, KPI Dashboards, Sales and Operational Planning and ForecastingAonix Inc.Nomad, UltraQuest ReporterApplix Inc.iTM1Arcplan Inc.Dynas...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Dec. 31, 2002

Travel Savings Start at Home

Companies can cut T&E costs significantly only if demand is managed as rigorously as supply. The savings extracted from rationalizing the supply chain can easily be cancelled out if employees are spending more than they should.The first and most obvious cost-cutting measure is to eliminate un...

By Jennifer Caplan • Dec. 1, 2002

Strategic Sourcing: New Leverage for Lower Travel Costs

Facing a dim near-term outlook for revenues, corporate managers are once again taking a good hard look at their travel and entertainment expenses. Although business travel declined significantly after 9/11, expenses for airfares, hotel rooms, and car rentals continue to make up a large portion of...

By Jennifer Caplan • Dec. 1, 2002

IT Budgets Hit the Wall

An October report from research and consulting firm Meta Group Inc. painted a bleak picture for information technology budgets, suggesting that anticipated increases are largely illusory and, worse, that cost-cutting efforts have now “hit the wall.” According to lead author and executive vice pre...

By Scott Leibs • Dec. 1, 2002

Next Year Looks Better, Say CFOs

The U.S. economy is once again poised to take a run at a recovery, say CFOs, but concerns about future prospects at home and abroad linger. Certainly turmoil at the Securities and Exchange Commission has done little to allay those concerns. But the hope that the wave of big accounting scandals is...

By Joseph McCafferty • Dec. 1, 2002

Partial Clearing

If the reach of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 can be measured by marketing spin, then Congress has indeed instituted sweeping corporate reform. After the legislation passed, vendors of all kinds of business software, including budgeting and planning tools, were quick to tout their applications a...

By Tim Reason • Dec. 1, 2002

Baseball, Apple Pie, and Corporate Scandals

As a rule, baseball fans tend to have real long memories.Much to the chagrin of managers and players, fans of the national pastime keep remembrances of bad trades and butchered balls alive for decades — long after the misdeeds have yellowed in newspaper archives.Amazingly, Boston Red Sox follower...

By Marie Leone • Oct. 20, 2002

The Case Against the Business Case

It is often said — particularly by those who engage in such behavior — that rules are made to be broken. Sometimes recklessness is rewarded, but more often it’s fatal.Most of us, for example, would never intentionally run a red light. But a great many of us have rolled through the occasional stop...

By Scott Leibs • Oct. 15, 2002

Any Happy Returns?

Seven years ago, when David Lifschitz hired on as both the CFO and CIO at Los Angeles-based Gehr Enterprises, he did the unthinkable — he pulled the plug on the privately held company’s MRP project, then in the second phase of implementation. “I saw immediately that we were heading into more and ...

By Russ Banham • Oct. 15, 2002

ROI: Results Often Immeasurable?

One by one, they rose to make their pitches to the IT steering committee. As the day wore on, recalls consultant Doug Hubbard, business cases were presented for more than 20 IT projects. Each was framed in terms of the tremendous savings and benefits it would provide for the company, a giant midw...

By Norm Alster • Oct. 15, 2002

Scrambled Nest Eggs

In response to recent cases of senior executives “cooking the books,” federal legislators and finance regulators want to do some cooking of their own. What they’re looking at are ways to scramble the nest eggs of certain high earners.Reports of executives also getting paid huge sums in the wake o...

By Craig Schneider • Oct. 8, 2002

I, Kozlowski

Disclaimer: While the entries in GW/BW are based on actual news items, some of the people, persons, events, and quotes in this article are fictional. Other stuff I just made up.Although there’s considerable debate among readers as to whether this column qualifies as a humor piece, it is intended ...

By John Goff • Sept. 27, 2002

Stealing Harvard

Not since 007 has a three-digit integer sounded so sexy.Now it’s 529, the number of the federal tax code section that spawned state-sponsored college savings plans, that’s grabbing the attention. Thanks to last year’s Tax Relief Act, which stripped away the tax on plan distributions, 529 plans ar...

By Craig Schneider • Sept. 26, 2002

Academia, and Other Assorted Nuts

Disclaimer: While the entries in GW/BW are based on actual news items, some of the people, persons, and events in this article are fictional. Other stuff I just made up.Please, no lawsuits.1. College CFOsAccording to a recent survey of CFOs of four-year colleges and universities by Education Mana...

By John Goff • Sept. 20, 2002

Finance Exec in Russia Abducted

The finance chief of Russia’s largest oil producer, OAO Lukoil, was abducted on his way to work last Thursday, according to reports from Dow Jones and the New York Times.Lukoil said first VP of finance Sergei Kukura‘s Mercedes was pulled over by masked men in camouflage carrying automatic rifles....

By Lisa Yoon • Sept. 16, 2002

Gracious Living

Disclaimer: While the entries in GW/BW are based on actual news items, some of the people, persons, and events in this article are fictional. Other stuff I just made up.Please, no lawsuits.GOOD WEEK 1. Jane WelchWhile going through a very public divorce must rank right up there with oral surgery ...

By John Goff • Sept. 13, 2002

CFOs: Recovery Not Right Around the Corner

After a cheerful forecast of an economic recovery three months ago, CFOs are once again concerned about future financial prospects at home and abroad. No doubt the scandals at WorldCom, Adelphia, and Tyco International–and the subsequent drop in the Dow and Nasdaq–have dampened their outlook.In f...

By Joseph McCafferty • Sept. 1, 2002

Global Confidence Survey

After a cheerful forecast of an economic recovery three months ago, CFOs are once again concerned about future financial prospects at home and abroad. No doubt the scandals at WorldCom, Adelphia, and Tyco International–and the subsequent drop in the Dow and Nasdaq–have dampened their outlook.In f...

By Joseph McCafferty • Sept. 1, 2002

Making Fares Fairer

When the airline industry announced second-quarter results in July, the numbers were not pretty: a combined $1.4 billion of red ink, after even larger losses in the first period. At the same time, US Airways was clearly on the brink of bankruptcy. So how did the airlines respond? They launched a ...

By Lori Calabro • Sept. 1, 2002

Summer Clearance

In response to numerous reader requests — yes, three can be considered numerous — we’ve decided to rerun our favorite items from Good Week/Bad Week from the past three months.We hope you enjoy them as much as we enjoyed not having to write a new column this week.(Disclaimer: While the entries in ...

By John Goff • Aug. 30, 2002

George of the Jungle

Disclaimer: While the entries in GW/BW are based on actual news items, some of the people, persons, and events in this article are fictional. Other stuff I just made up.Please, no lawsuits.GOOD WEEK1. President BushIn a ceremony in the White House on Tuesday, President Bush signed sweeping legisl...

By John Goff • Aug. 2, 2002