Technology: Page 21
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More Department Leaders Make Their Own IT Decisions
Senior management executives are increasingly budgeting for information-technology purchases particular to their own functional areas or departments, beyond what’s included in corporate and IT-department budgets.In a survey by research firm Forrester, conducted from August to November 2012, 92 pe...
By Taylor Provost • May 7, 2013 -
NicoElNino. Retrieved from Shutterstock.
Many Unhappy Returns
CFOs are suckers for precision. They can recite exact figures about the percentage growth of their employers’ share price in after-hours trading, for example, or tell by how many cents the company beat analysts’ expectations in its latest quarterly earnings report. They unspool figures and ratios...
By Josh Hyatt and Matt Surka • April 15, 2013 -
Explore the Trendline➔
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TrendlineThe CFO Strategy for Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence’s impact on the office of the CFO continues to evolve, and finance chiefs must be aware of the opportunities it will create for growth.
By CFO.com staff -
NicoElNino. Retrieved from Shutterstock.
Group Therapy
Q: Can I apply groups without using subtotals?A: Just select columns or rows to be grouped and select Data, Group. It is fairly tedious to add many groupings, but this can be easier than continually hiding and unhiding rows or columns.Select the entire column for Jan, Feb, and Mar (Figure 1) and ...
By Bill Jelen • April 15, 2013 -
NicoElNino. Retrieved from Shutterstock.
Oracle Blames “Unmotivated” Sales Force for Weak Quarter
Oracle CFO Safra Catz cited a “lack of urgency” among the sales staff as the reason for a sluggish third quarter during the technology giant’s earnings call Wednesday afternoon. The company reported a 1% decline in total revenue from the same quarter last year, which left its executives “not at a...
By Taylor Provost • March 21, 2013 -
NicoElNino. Retrieved from Shutterstock.
What’s in a Name?
Q: I’ve seen how to assign a name to a cell. Is it also possible to assign a name to a constant? That could be useful for a number, such as a local sales tax rate, that changes periodically.A: To assign names to constants, follow these steps:1. Select Formula, Define Name.2. In the New Name dialo...
By Bill Jelen • March 21, 2013 -
NicoElNino. Retrieved from Shutterstock.
Horizontal Help
Q. Why doesn’t Excel offer horizontal subtotals? For example, I’d like to add a subtotal in E for Q1 (see Figure 1). A. This is a great question. Although it takes a lot of steps to create horizontal subtotals, using the shortcut keys speeds up the process. Follow the steps below.1. Select the ...
By Bill Jelen • Feb. 7, 2013 -
NicoElNino. Retrieved from Shutterstock.
An Isolating Task
USER PROBLEM: My company assigns an account ID in the format SSS-XX-YYYY. I need to isolate the XX portion of the account ID in order to subtotal or sort the data. What is the best way to do that?SOLUTION: You can insert a new column and use the MID function to isolate the necessary digits from t...
By Bill Jelen • Dec. 15, 2012 -
NicoElNino. Retrieved from Shutterstock.
Filtering Filters
Q: I don’t want to offer filter dropdowns for quantity and revenue in my customer sales sheet, because they confuse the people who use the worksheet. I want the filters to be available only on columns A:D. What’s the best way to do that?A: You normally apply a filter by selecting the entire data ...
By Bill Jelen • Nov. 15, 2012 -
NicoElNino. Retrieved from Shutterstock.
Rank and File
Q: I have four writers working on a project. Each week, I need to report how many pages they have written toward their goal. How can I add a formula to my tracking sheet that will allow me to rank them in high-to-low order (Figure 1)?A: If you are not concerned about ties, you can use the RANK or...
By Bill Jelen • Oct. 8, 2012 -
NicoElNino. Retrieved from Shutterstock.
An Average Solution
Q: I have 36 months of sales data and need to create a prediction of sales. How can I calculate a 3-month moving average and a trend line based on that average?A: You need 2 months of history before you can begin calculating a 3-month moving average. When you have a data set similar to Figure 1, ...
By Bill Jelen • Sept. 1, 2012 -
NicoElNino. Retrieved from Shutterstock.
LinkedIn Aims to Diversify New Mobile Revenue Stream
During LinkedIn’s second-quarter earnings call Thursday, chief executive officer Jeff Weiner announced that new-member registration via mobile devices was up 5% over last quarter and accounted for 15% of all new-member registrations, up from 10% the prior quarter. The increase, Weiner suggested, ...
By Taylor Provost • Aug. 3, 2012 -
NicoElNino. Retrieved from Shutterstock.
Putting Social Networks to Work
For some time now, executives have been touting teamwork as a competitive tool. The complexity brought on by globalization, they argue, creates challenges so grand they can be addressed only by multiple minds. And the rise of internal networks and social-media tools makes far-flung collaboration ...
By Josh Hyatt • Aug. 1, 2012 -
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A Refreshing Change
Q: I’ve discovered that some of the underlying data in my pivot table is wrong. After I correct a number, the pivot table does not appear to include the change. Why does this happen, and how do I hold on to my updates?A: There is an important concept to understand about pivot tables: When you cre...
By Bill Jelen • Aug. 1, 2012 -
NicoElNino. Retrieved from Shutterstock.
Five Big Ways Your ERP Could Go Right
All of you smart CFOs who read my last column, “Five Big Ways Your ERP Can Go Wrong,” have probably solved your enterprise resource planning problems and are presently luxuriating in its new-found benefits and positive ROI. Missed it? Well then, you better read this column as well as checking ou...
By Martha Heller • July 20, 2012 -
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Made for Each Other
It’s no secret: companies large and small are scrambling for growth. And as businesspeople turn over every last stone in that quest, they can’t afford to spend all their time chasing down information. They need their information to catch up to them. Operational agility is key, and it’s rooted in ...
By David W. Owens • June 15, 2012 -
NicoElNino. Retrieved from Shutterstock.
Keep It Secret
Q: Are hidden rows easily detected by others working with your spreadsheet?A: Hidden rows are more visible than most spreadsheet users realize. For example, anyone receiving your spreadsheet will see column-heading letters jump from F to H, leaving them to wonder what you hid away in column G. If...
By Bill Jelen • May 15, 2012 -
NicoElNino. Retrieved from Shutterstock.
Putting People First
In 2007, Jim Braun was CFO of OmniTrax, a regional railroad operator that was making a lot of money by leasing and selling the land and buildings it owned around its tracks. The real estate market was on the brink of an historic collapse that year, but “I’d be lying if I told you I knew it would ...
By David Rosenbaum • April 15, 2012 -
NicoElNino. Retrieved from Shutterstock.
A Global Shift (of Decimals)
Q: I have a column in a spreadsheet that mistakenly has whole numbers instead of percentages — for instance, 123 instead of 1.23. How can I shift the decimal point two positions to the left?A: Follow these steps to turn whole numbers into decimals or percentages:• Go to any blank cell in the spre...
By Bill Jelen • April 15, 2012 -
NicoElNino. Retrieved from Shutterstock.
The Seductive Promise of Big Data
Between 2005 and 2007, Jim Braun was CFO of OmniTRAX, a privately held railroad, transportation, and real estate management company. OmniTRAX owns shortline railroads (less than $500 million in annual revenue), but a significant percentage of its income in those years came from leveraging the lan...
By David Rosenbaum • Feb. 24, 2012 -
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The True Meaning of Service
Some of you may have listened to President Obama’s State of the Union address last week. You might have noticed his emphasis on manufacturing and wondered why. David Brooks did. In his New York Times op-ed following the speech, he note that “Ninety percent of American workers work in the service ...
By Timothy Chou • Feb. 3, 2012 -
NicoElNino. Retrieved from Shutterstock.
How to Search for Cell Comments Using Excel
David H. asks,“Using the ‘Find’ feature in Excel works when you need to locate items quickly, but is there a way to use this, or another function, that will expand the search to include text in any comments within the worksheet?”Cell comments are a great way to document a spreadsheet. But if you ...
By Bill Jelen • Feb. 1, 2012 -
NicoElNino. Retrieved from Shutterstock.
DIY Technology Projects: Threat or Menace?
Smart people can make stupid decisions. Case in point: business executives who decide they can address their technology needs without involving IT, responding to the IT supply-and-demand crunch that afflicts so many enterprises today.In my experience, nobody wins in these do-it-yourself projects....
By Susan Cramm • Jan. 5, 2012 -
NicoElNino. Retrieved from Shutterstock.
Best of 2011: Technology
If 2010 was the year when cloud computing first entered the CFO’s consciousness, and its theoretical shortcomings and benefits were debated in something of a vacuum, 2011 was devoted to rolling up sleeves and digging into the cloud’s practical applications. How was cloud computing altering the re...
By CFO Editorial Staff • Dec. 29, 2011 -
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Three Gifts of the IT Magi
’Tis the season of giving and receiving, so I started thinking about what I’d wish for if I were a CFO. While a good solid quarter with no revenue-recognition issues would be high on my list, if I put on my IT hat, there would be three presents I’d like to find under my tree.Application cloud ser...
By Timothy Chou • Dec. 20, 2011 -
NicoElNino. Retrieved from Shutterstock.
How 3 Big IT Trends Will Affect You and Your CIO in 2012
The IT media machine — jolly journalists, grave analysts, and energetic marketers — is hard at work cranking out technology predictions for the coming year. It’s a traditional part of the holiday season. It’s expected. My holiday gift to you is to spare you the chore of slogging through all those...
By Martha Heller • Dec. 13, 2011
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