Workers’ Online Shopping Costs Companies

‘Tis the season (almost) to be jolly, and to shop. But companies may be significantly exposed to costly data breaches and lost productivity if they don’t take steps to control employees’ online shopping from their work computers.Young employees pose the greatest risk. Four out of 10 Americans age...

By David McCann • Nov. 13, 2008

Hype or Hope

For the past year, Richard Cameron has been on a mission. The divisional CFO of BT has been overseeing an ambitious project that could help the £20.7 billion (€26 billion) UK telecoms group slash millions of pounds a year off its energy bills and cuts its carbon emissions by 80% from 1996 levels ...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Nov. 4, 2008

Explore the Trendline➔

The 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

Mobile Security

As mobile phones, smart phones, PDAs, laptops, BlackBerrys and other mobile gadgets spread across the business landscape, CFOs are finding themselves working with CIOs and IT managers to fight an ongoing security war. Lost and stolen devices, porous wireless links and devious employees are among ...

By John Edwards • Nov. 4, 2008

Can Companies Excel at Fair Value?

When FAS 157 took effect last November, many finance departments and business units faced a new accounting requirement but lacked any new technology with which to address it. To determine the fair value of a wide range of balance-sheet items, they turned to that old standby, the spreadsheet, to p...

By Robert Hertzberg • Nov. 1, 2008

The Consumer Revolution

Cash may still be king, but on the streets of Japan there’s a new rival for the throne. Millions of people there use their mobile phones to buy anything from vending-machine drinks to train tickets. To pay, a user passes a chip-enabled handset over a compatible reader. Credit is then deducted fro...

By Yasmin Ghahremani • Oct. 17, 2008

Pay Up

There’s never a good time to hear that one of your suppliers is raising its prices, but some times — like now, as economies tumble — are worse than others. So customers of SAP could be forgiven for not being enthusiastic about the news that the German software firm plans to “transition” them to a...

By Tim Burke • Oct. 7, 2008

Power Points

Skyrocketing energy costs mean CFOs who haven’t evaluated energy efficiency in the past two years are “letting money fly out the door,” says Jerry Jackson, energy economist and professor at Texas A&M University. He estimates the right technology can slash the average company’s energy bill by ...

By Alix Stuart • Oct. 1, 2008

How’m I Doing?

If you want to see dysfunctional global-finance departments in action, look no further than the subprime-mortgage meltdown. More than a year after the crisis hit, its effects are still rippling through the banking world. As audits give rise to write-offs and restatements, it becomes painfully cle...

By Yasmin Ghahremani • Oct. 1, 2008

Cash, Credit, or Cell Phone?

Cash may still be king, but on the streets of Japan there’s anew rival for the throne. Millions of people there use their mobile phones to buy everything from vending-machine sodas to train tickets. To pay, a user passes a chip-enabled handset over a compatible reader. Credit is then deducted fro...

By Yasmin Ghahremani • Oct. 1, 2008

Can Your CIO Spell IFRS?

In the nation’s finance departments, the wince-inducing memories are still fresh of having to lean on IT for help deciphering Sarbanes-Oxley. Yet CFOs are being faced once more with turning to their technology counterparts for guidance in a major financial reporting project. The job this time — c...

By Sarah Johnson • Sept. 3, 2008

A Place in the Cloud

Over the past two years, Google has spent a whopping $5 billion to construct a network of state-of-the-art data centers. The company’s goal is to meet not only its own insatiable need for computing power, but yours as well.Google’s investment is part of a broad movement toward “cloud computing,” ...

By Vincent Ryan • Sept. 1, 2008

Spreadsheets: Free to Learn

You don’t need a spreadsheet to calculate the cost of the wide array of Web-based spreadsheet instruction and support resources that are available: Most are available gratis. Here’s a rundown of some of the best free sites out there, with their strengths and weaknesses.1) Joseph Rubin’s ExcelTip...

By John Edwards • Aug. 26, 2008

Sloppier Spreadsheets: How Bad Can They Get?

In June, CFO.com followed its popular article Spreadsheet “Worst Practices” with a collection of reader feedback we called Sloppy Spreadsheets: Readers Speak Up. That second column, with annotations by our original writers, drew almost as much interest.Today we offer another sequel based on reade...

By Roy Harris • Aug. 20, 2008

The Slow Death of Financial Forms

The Securities and Exchange Commission has introduced a new system that supports data-tagged financial statements, which large companies will likely have to start filing later this year. The changes will break the SEC from its “form-based approach” for collecting information from companies, accor...

By Sarah Johnson • Aug. 19, 2008

Offshoring Is Still Going Strong

Offshoring may be getting less air-time as a political wedge issue this year, but by no means has the practice fallen from favor. A new study, in fact, sees companies increasing their use of offshore resources by 50 percent in the next three years, while cutting costs by up to half through the us...

By Alan Rappeport • Aug. 14, 2008

CFOs Anticipate a Filing Crunch

Finance executives are dragging their wing-tips as the Securities and Exchange Commission races to mandate the use of data-tagging in financial statements within the next year. In their comment letters for a proposal that would require companies to use so-called interactive data technology, the e...

By Sarah Johnson • Aug. 5, 2008

Deloitte Poll Sees Litigation Data Panic

Corporate executives feel that the volume of litigation-related data in their organizations is beginning to reach unmanageable levels, according to a recent online poll conducted by Deloitte Financial Advisory Services LLP.The survey showed that nearly 40 percent of respondents believed that the ...

By Stephen Taub • Aug. 4, 2008

BPO Company: We’re A-OK on Pay

TeleTech Holdings, a prominent business-process-outsourcing company, reported that the Securities and Exchange Commission will not take any action against it after reviewing the company’s accounting for stock-based compensation.Teletech, which recently became current in its regulatory filings aft...

By Stephen Taub • July 23, 2008

CEOs Taking the Tech Reins from CFOs

More chief information officers are reporting to their firms’ chief executives and less to their CFOs, according to a new report by Forrester Research. In the just-released study of 2007, which polled 503 CIOs, 18 percent said they reported to the CFO. That was down from 25 percent in Forrester...

By Alan Rappeport • July 21, 2008

Spreadsheets: Formula for Success

“It’s a strange feeling speaking about spreadsheet design to a group that actually might find it interesting.” That’s how Dick Moffat, president of Canadian software house Personal Logic Associates, opened his presentation to the annual gathering of the European Spreadsheet Risks Interest Group (...

By Jason Karaian • July 18, 2008

The Other Green

For all the undeniable benefits of the information-technology revolution, it comes at a cost, or costs. The first is energy: U.S. data centers consumed 61 billion kilowatt hours in 2006, ten times the amount consumed by all residences and businesses in San Francisco. That in turn exacts an enviro...

By Yasmin Ghahremani • July 15, 2008

Behind the Curve

Somebody has to say it — thewebsites of Asia’s major companiesare creaky, cluttered,and confusing. Assessing the corporateportals of 75 of the world’s largestcompanies by market capitalization,London consultancy Bowen Craggsgave China Mobile a grade of just 94out of a maximum of 280 points, makin...

By Cesar Bacani • July 10, 2008

Spinning a New Web

Sensing that the “software-as-a-service” pitch is losing its zing, customerrelationship management (CRM) vendors havediscovered a new angle: Web 2.0.The major CRM vendors, including Oracle,SAP, Salesforce.com, and Microsoft, are addingon a host of features designed to allow sales andmarketing peo...

By Cesar Bacani • July 9, 2008

Vermont Wants to Be the “Delaware of the Net”

Known for its Green Mountains, maple syrup, and, of course, moonlight, Vermont might not seem the most likely state to welcome companies with edgy technology. And yet it is virtually in the lead.A bill signed into law earlier this month positions it as a leader in incorporating so-called virtual ...

By Alan Rappeport • June 30, 2008

Sloppy Spreadsheets: Readers Speak Out

The recent detailing of “Spreadsheet Worst Practices” on CFO.com clearly tapped deep-seated emotions among our readers, who shared their reactions in dozens of comments and E-mail messages and offered their own pet peeves from the world of finance.Today we present a “best of the worst” selection ...

By CFO Editorial Staff • June 18, 2008