Global Confidence Survey

It’s no surprise that confidence in the short-term economy is low. The economic uncertainty that followed the September 11 terrorist attacks still looms over the domestic and global business landscape, casting its shadow on an already sluggish economy. Unemployment figures continue to creep up, w...

By Marie Leone • Dec. 1, 2001

An Acquired Taste

No one will deny that the latest generation of budgeting and planning (B&P) software is capable of doing great things. These Web-enabled systems are designed to help companies radically speed up the planning process, even as they allow many more people to participate. They import data points ...

By Kris Frieswick • Dec. 1, 2001

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

Fudge Budgets

As a recent CFO survey shows, getting employees to actually use budgeting and planning software can be tricky. Indeed, in some cases, up to half of B&P software seats go unused. Even if workers do embrace a whiz-bang B&P application, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll make good budgeting...

By Kris Frieswick • Nov. 30, 2001

I Love IR

When Adidas-Salomon, the $5 billion German sports goods maker, announced it was to pay $67 million for a stake in Bayern Munich, Germany’s top soccer club, shareholders quickly reached for their red cards. Concerned about the deal’s timing and price, investors sent shares tumbling more than 8 per...

By Ben McLannahan • Nov. 14, 2001

Survey: The Near Future

The Next SocietyTomorrow is closer than you thinkThe new economy may or may not materialise, but there is no doubt that the next society will be with us shortly. In the developed world, and probably in the emerging countries as well, this new society will be a good deal more important than the ne...

By Peter Drucker • Nov. 2, 2001

Corporate Travel

Like many executives, James McDevitt is reevaluating his company’s travel policy in light of the events of September 11. “The fewer employees we have traveling, the safer everyone will be,” says McDevitt, CFO of software maker Clarus Corp. At sneaker and sporting-apparel company Saucony, CFO Mich...

By Jennifer Caplan • Nov. 1, 2001

New Brand Day

Companies have generally slashed advertising spending when tough times loom, and these tough times are no different: One recent report predicts spending in 2001 will be down 6 percent from 2000 levels. Advertising is a particularly easy target for cost cutting, because few companies have develope...

By Kris Frieswick • Nov. 1, 2001

Going for Break: Our Third Annual Tax Efficiency Scorecard

Earlier this year, Procter & Gamble announced that it would buy the Clairol hair-care business of Bristol-Myers Squibb for $4.95 billion in cash, a significant premium over Bristol-Myers’s cost basis for the assets. In response, Standard & Poor’s and Dominion Bond Rating Service soon down...

By Ronald Fink • Nov. 1, 2001

Contract Automation: Digitizing the Party of the First Part

Over the past decade, software designers have spent a good deal of time developing Web-based applications that automate just about every aspect of the buyer-seller relationship. But the creation of the agreements that bind those relationships — contracts — has largely been ignored by application ...

By Jennifer Caplan • Oct. 17, 2001

A Different Way of Working

For all the hullabaloo over new business models and dotcom startups, the benefits of the fixed-line Internet have accrued mostly to existing firms that reinvented themselves around it, rather than new firms that started from scratch. By adopting e-mail, intranets, extranets, customer-relationship...

By Economist Staff • Oct. 13, 2001

Pretzel Logistics? Global Trade Getting Complicated

“The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.” Had globalization preceded the Old Testament, the Book of Job might have said the same about governments and cross-border trade. It seems that for every trade minister willing to slash tariffs in the name of free trade, there is an equally willing envir...

By Anthony Sibillin • Oct. 1, 2001

The Dragon Dance

When the fate of a U.S. spy plane touched off tense negotiations between Washington and Beijing earlier this year, American companies felt the reverberations. Fearing that the situation might devolve into “Cuban missile crisis proportions,” for example, executives at running-shoe and athletic-app...

By Scott Leibs and Tom Leander • Sept. 27, 2001

Search Technology: Get the Picture?

Webmap Server Finance, developed by Boston-based WebMap Technologies, transforms any Internet, intranet, database, or extranet information repository into an interactive visual map. “The amount of information available to financial decision makers continues to grow exponentially,” says Pattie Mae...

By John Edwards • Sept. 15, 2001

Lifetime Customer Value

In the primordial days of E-commerce — circa 1998 — E-tailers spent a great deal of capital on marketing and advertising. The idea was pretty simple. Convinced that they had to establish market dominance early on, E-commerce operators looked to generate as many sales as possible — no matter the c...

By John Berry • Sept. 15, 2001

Global Confidence Survey

There’s a chill in the air, but don’t blame it on the approach of autumn. Missed earnings reports, record-setting layoffs, and stock-market and productivity slides have cooled corporate enthusiasm, as only 13 percent of U.S. CFOs registered a vote of confidence in the global economy for the next ...

By Marie Leone • Sept. 1, 2001

Three Ways to Strengthen Your Travel-and-Entertainment Savings Program

Cut unneeded travel-agent fees. Book online. Watch what you spend. The steps employees should take to keep a company’s travel and entertainment costs within bounds are simple enough. What’s not so simple is how employers can get corporate travelers to take those steps.Do you issue a mandate stati...

By Craig Schneider • Sept. 1, 2001

Straighten Up and Fly Right

“I’m not putting that on my expense report,” quips Jack Sommer, referring to the Molson he’s just ordered while aboard a plane sitting on the tarmac.As corporate controller of Boston-based Student Advantage Inc., he knows that the cost of one beer on his delayed night flight isn’t a threat to the...

By Craig Schneider • Sept. 1, 2001

Collective Decisions

Even with the best information, smaller companies may lack sufficient clout to cut good deals with airlines, as might larger companies that don’t centralize travel purchases. So even as he tries to aggregate global contracts for his firm, Tokyo Electron America Inc., and its parent company in Jap...

By Alix Stuart • Sept. 1, 2001

Fellow Travelers

With the economy grounded and travel costs soaring, many companies would love to keep their employees home. But American workers continue to hit the road: This year, business travel will reach $110 billion, up from $103 billion last year.There are new ways to cut costs, however, some of which tak...

By Alix Stuart • Sept. 1, 2001

Global Contracts: Prices Without Borders?

At first glance, global pricing contracts look like a win-win situation for corporate buyers and sellers intent on doing more business across international borders. After all, multinational companies increasingly want to buy products or services from one supplier, at the same price, in every coun...

By Nikos Valance • Aug. 27, 2001

Vision Thing

Yogi Berra got it wrong. For most companies, the future is what it used to be: a perpetually blurry hodge-podge of vague expectations, missed opportunities, and unpleasant surprises. Forecasting remains a blind alley.Software companies sense an opportunity and are attacking the forecasting proble...

By Scott Leibs • Aug. 1, 2001

Building Budgets on the Web

Nepco found itself in a bit of a bind last year. The company was getting ready for its annual budget review, and its whole budgeting process had all but gone up in smoke.The firm, which builds power plants, planned to use a budgeting system that had been developed internally. But the employee who...

By Joseph Radigan • July 9, 2001

When Software Lets You Count Your Costs to the Penny

If you’re in the retailing business, you’ll be forgiven if you view Christmas as synonymous with overhead costs. For Hickory Farms, the catalog retailer of food gift baskets, an upgrade last fall in its budgeting system preceded its fine-tuning of its overhead accounting this year.The company has...

By Theresa W. Carey • July 9, 2001

What to Look for in Your Next Budgeting System

Rolling up tens or hundreds of spreadsheets into one master budget can make the budgeting and planning process painfully time-consuming and error-prone. Because it is usually done once a year, by the time the budget is finally nailed down, it can quickly become outdated.According to Dan Sholler, ...

By Jennifer Caplan • July 9, 2001

Will Better Budget Software Give You Job Security?

Last summer, by the time the scale of the current business slowdown became apparent, it was too late for many companies to cut their spending ahead of the curve.Could better budget software have made a difference? Maybe. Hindsight is always 20/20, but too many companies found themselves in a situ...

By Joseph Radigan • July 9, 2001