When a Process Can’t Fail, Be Brilliant About the Basics

From time to time I’ve consulted on or been responsible for managing processes that couldn’t ever go wrong. A process failure could have had catastrophic safely or economic consequences. A lot of times, the critical issues were to do with technology, but plenty were also dependent on human beings...

By John Parkinson • April 2, 2014

Machine Dreams

“You go to war with the army you have,” former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld famously remarked, “not the army you might want or wish to have.”The same can be said of companies today, as they battle to capture market share and profits. But victory in business often goes to those who secure a t...

By Josh Hyatt • April 1, 2014

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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

Developing Leaders Is HR’s Most Important Function

Some may regard human-capital management, fairly or not, as a rather soft, amorphous, ill-defined discipline, compared to such razor-edged financial and business pursuits as capital acquisition and allocation, mergers and acquisitions, and product development.But here is a statement that could no...

By David McCann • March 20, 2014

Controller Was Apple CFO’s Successor All Along

Long-time Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer will step down in September, after 18 years at the company. Oppenheimer helped Apple earn “record profit and [build] a significant pile of cash,” according to the New York Times.Image via CrunchBase He’ll be replaced by Luca Maestri, corporate controller at A...

By Marielle Segarra • March 5, 2014

What Do CFOs Do on Twitter?

No, it’s not a trick question. There are CFOs who use social media. A recent survey by Leadtail, a social media marketing agency, analyzed tweets and shared links from 502 U.S.-based senior finance professionals (CFOs and VPs of Finance) in the fourth quarter of 2013. Here’s what they found:News ...

By Marielle Segarra • March 4, 2014

Readers Sound Off: The IT Talent Problem

It’s no secret that technology talent is in short supply when, perhaps, it is needed the most. But what’s not so clear is what to do with technologists who you hire and are not business savvy. As CFO columnist Martha Heller wrote last March, if business executives had one wish, an overwhelming nu...

By Martha Heller, Aram Zucker-Scharff, and Vincent Ryan • Feb. 25, 2014

Innovative Recruiting Enabler Brings In Its First CFO

Are you familiar with Glassdoor.com? If not, you should be. You can find out what your employees are saying about your company. If you care about that sort of thing, that is.On Glassdoor, present and past employees can publish anonymous reviews about a company. Just be prepared: It might not be a...

By David McCann • Feb. 18, 2014

Mercedes-Benz USA CFO Harald Henn: Video

Harald Henn is a gearhead. Lucky for him, he works at one of the best-selling luxury automobile manufacturers in the world, Mercedes-Benz USA (MBUSA). In January, the unit of Daimler AG reported the highest annual sales volumes in its history with 312,534 vehicles sold, a rise of 14 percent over ...

By Marielle Segarra • Feb. 5, 2014

Profits Up, Jobs Flat

Optimism in the U.S. business environment was stuck in something of a holding pattern at year-end, but at least it was heading in the right direction, according to the results of the Duke University/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook for the fourth quarter of 2013. In this quarter’s survey, we ...

By David W. Owens • Feb. 1, 2014

Don’t Be Sidelined by ACA Delay: Act Now to Avoid ‘Play or Pay’ Flag

Last July the IRS granted employers an extra year before it will begin imposing penalties under the employer shared responsibility provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). But there is plenty to do right now to prepare for the 2015 tax season, when the penalties will commence.In what’s become...

By Don Garlitz and Mary Bauman • Jan. 30, 2014

CFOs on the Move: Week Ending Jan. 17

Chuck Stevens has been appointed to lead the finance function at General Motors. He succeeds Dan Ammann, who was promoted to president. Stevens has been CFO of GM North America since 2010.RadioShack named John Feray to the top finance spot, effective Feb. 6. Most recently, he was senior vice pres...

By Joan Urdang • Jan. 17, 2014

The Big Bang Theory

For years Sleep HealthCenters, an American company that ran clinics at which people with sleep disorders could stay overnight to have their ailments diagnosed, grew nicely and steadily. But in 2012 its dream business turned sour as folk began using cheap, wearable devices that let experts monitor...

By Economist Staff • Jan. 15, 2014

A CFO’s Past Shapes His Present

Mark Peek has been through this drill before: running finance at a fast-growing, newly public technology company. He overcame that challenge at VMware, where he was finance chief from April 2007 through May 2012, a period during which the virtualization software company’s annual revenue ballooned...

By David McCann • Jan. 14, 2014

Five Ways to Improve Your Online Brand

If you’re on the management team of a professional services or consulting firm, you know it’s important that both you and the experts who are your “product” project a positive brand image. In fact, the same is true for any finance executive who wants to earn and keep the respect of banks, investo...

By Susan Jacobs • Jan. 9, 2014

Paying the ‘Attention Tax’ on Automation

As we automate more and more processes within business and commerce, it’s important to bear in mind that “people are not peripherals” and can’t be treated as though they are, as one of my colleagues likes to say. The systems and software we have today are much better than we had 20 years ago, and...

By John Parkinson • Jan. 9, 2014

When You Don’t Want Workers to Be a Class Act

Despite recent Supreme Court and lower-court rulings that have favored employers in class-action lawsuits brought on behalf of workers, there’s no room for complacency among top corporate executives over the potential for such legal actions to wreak financial havoc on companies.That’s according t...

By David McCann • Jan. 8, 2014

One Path to Super-Charged Growth: Video

Ten years ago, sisters Britney Vickery and Ivy Hall were like many other young moms: they wanted to devote lots of time to their kids yet still find a creative outlet, contribute financially to their families and get some much-needed time with adults. Their solution: make handbags and sell them a...

By David McCann • Dec. 13, 2013

A Guarded Employment Diagnosis in a Slow Recovery

Optimism in the U.S. business environment was stuck in something of a holding pattern at year-end, but at least was heading in the right direction, according to the results of the Duke University/CFO Global Business Outlook for the fourth quarter of 2013. In this quarter’s survey, we polled 400 f...

By David W. Owens • Dec. 11, 2013

Clouds in the Forecast

Cloud computing — still in its relative infancy but hurtling toward maturity at an ever-faster pace — and the exploding usage of mobile devices for business purposes will dominate finance-department plans for technology investments next year, according to CFO’s September survey of 148 senior fina...

By Keith Button • Dec. 6, 2013

Health-Care Changes to Demand CFO Attention in 2014

Many senior finance executives who aren’t as well-versed on health care matters as they are on other factors that determine financial results are about to get an education.The dawn of the Affordable Care Act’s individual-mandate era and other ACA-related issues, as well as emerging macro trends i...

By David McCann • Dec. 6, 2013

Melding Minds With the CIO

Mike Herring knows a thing or two about leveraging the relationship between CFO and chief information officer. During his time running finance at Adobe Systems, before he became finance chief of Pandora last February, the information-technology department reported to him. In fact, he worked with ...

By Alissa Ponchione • Nov. 27, 2013

Predictive Analytics Drives Profitability, Growth

Colin Hare There are several ways in which a CFO can leverage predictive-analytics solutions to manage profitability and enable corporate functions to adopt its principles. CFOs can successfully lead that charge if they know that:1. Analytics must be forward-looking to be truly impactful. A compa...

By Lana Klein and Colin Hare • Nov. 25, 2013

Holding On for Tomorrow

It tales a cool head to invest. A firm’s decision to build up capacity or spend cash on research pays out tomorrow but must be paid for today. That makes investment returns uncertain, influenced by factors — from oil prices to politics — that firms cannot control. With rich-world investment rates...

By Economist Staff • Nov. 25, 2013

Private Health-Exchange Market Consolidates

The market of private health-insurance exchanges for active employees is quite immature. But a brief consolidation phase may have already been completed with today’s announcement that Towers Watson has acquired Liazon for $215 million.Towers Watson is among several human-capital consulting firms,...

By David McCann • Nov. 22, 2013

U.S. Retail Sales Growth Stalls

Bad news this holiday season: sales growth among private retailers is basically flat this year, according to Sageworks, a financial information company. Privately held retail companies are growing sales at an annual rate of 0.8 percent on average, according to financial statements collected by Sa...

By Marielle Segarra • Nov. 21, 2013