What’s IT Worth?

Though global spending on IT exceeded India’s GDP last year, a new study suggests that companies aren’t getting their money’s worth. The report, commissioned by UK software company Micro Focus and carried out by Soumitra Dutta of French business school Insead, claims that companies mistakenly man...

By Laura Cameron • Dec. 10, 2007

Flu Diligence

Flu season never used to be regarded as a corporate risk issue. In fact, “before last year, 99 percent of companies hadn’t thought about it at all,” says Michael Cryer, M.D., senior medical director and principal at Hewitt Associates.No more. Since the potential risk of a virulent avian flu began...

By Karen M. Kroll • Dec. 1, 2007

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

Rust Belt

Sadly, the horrific collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis in August did not surprise longtime critics of the nation’s transportation system. The truth is, civil engineers, trucking CEOs, even media types (see “Delayed in the USA,” September 2006) have been carping about America’s r...

By Esther Shein • Dec. 1, 2007

Insecure About Security

It’s every CFO’s nightmare. A fax comes incontaining a thinly veiled threat: “You have a breach inyour security system and you need to hire us to fix it.”People typically ignore the fax until a second and thenperhaps a third message comes — this time with a samplereport of credit card numbers, sa...

By Esther Shein • Nov. 15, 2007

SAP Purchase Survives Antitrust Review

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has approved SAP’s $6.8 billion purchase of Paris-based software company Business Objects, a deal that combines two major suppliers of technology used by finance operations. The FTC noted on its website that the deal was granted “early termination” of its antitr...

By Stephen Taub • Nov. 7, 2007

The Walls Come Down

What can be left to outsource? Companies have farmed out IT, HR and all manner of business processes. Now, it looks as if management of the bricks and mortar are heading off the books too.European companies have shied away from property outsourcing — which covers everything from the management of...

By Eila Rana • Nov. 5, 2007

Lights, Camera, Audits!

Even though the increasing number of accounting graduates — up 19 percent from 2000 to 2004, according to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants — should go a long way toward helping accounting firms meet their goal of hiring 10 to 18 percent more grads in the next two years, some...

By Kate Plourd • Nov. 2, 2007

Virtual Agreement

Teamwork isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, especially when the task at hand demands creativity. Research has shown, for example, that people working individually on a creative task will outperform the same number working in a group.That’s in part because they don’t have to wait their turn, potenti...

By Alix Stuart • Nov. 1, 2007

Losses Jump, Spending Doesn’t

A snapshot of the latest Computer Security Institute survey findings on computer crime shows that the average loss per company suffering a breach is up substantially after several years of decline. But spending, while up slightly in dollar volume, is dipping as a percent of IT budgets.

By CFO Editorial Staff • Nov. 1, 2007

Wireless Transfer

It’s just a box, a little red box. But soon, that little red box may change how banking is conducted.Known as “CryptoVue,” the biometric encryption system enables banks to conduct a wide range of financial transactions and data-processing chores wirelessly, reducing their dependency on T1 lines a...

By Esther Shein • Nov. 1, 2007

Worst Possible Time for an IT Failure

Colorado Rockies opponents have not found a way to slow down the streaking baseball team, which has won 21 of its last 22 games on the way to its first World Series appearance. However, a technology bump put the brakes on ticket sales for the Series, which starts Wednesday. Companies face a numbe...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 23, 2007

Another (Small) Step for XBRL

CFOs may not be able to avoid the topic of XBRL for much longer. A newand more comprehensive version of the data tags that turn financialstatements into “interactivedata” has been completed and goes into market-testing this month.XBRL-US, thenonprofit organization hired by the Securities and Exch...

By Alix Stuart • Oct. 22, 2007

Companies Checking Out E-Payments

Corporations are gradually shedding their unease with electronic payment methods, an evolution that likely will accelerate over the next few years, according to a new report from the Association for Financial Professionals.The typical organization still makes 74 percent of its business-to-busines...

By David McCann • Oct. 22, 2007

What Oracle’s BEA Bid Means for CFOs

Acquisition-hungry Oracle has made another buyout bid, once again raising doubts and uncertainty for users of business-related software. This time the software giant has made an unsolicited offer to acquire BEA Systems for $17 per share, or $6.7 billion.If its offer is accepted, Oracle would furt...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 12, 2007

Spammers Eye the C-Suite

Spammers looking to pilfer sensitive corporate data are going straight to the top. Last week, MessageLabs Inc., a security firm, revealed that senior executives of its corporate clients received a combined 1,600-plus messages during a two-hour span in June and a 16-hour span in September. Clearly...

By Alan Rappeport • Oct. 10, 2007

Audio Now Visual

When it comes to rating the technological progress of office equipment, the telephone probably runs a close second to the stapler. Walk in to almost any place of business and you’ll see the same rectangular boxes companies have been using for years. The only change has been a proliferation of bli...

By Elaine Appleton Grant • Oct. 1, 2007

Social Studies

Due to a reporting error, this information presented here does not match the data that appears in the September 2007 print edition of CFO magazine. The number of clients surveyed by SelectMinds was 60.Social networking sites aren’t just for Generation Yanymore. Increasingly, companies are finding...

By Kate Plourd • Sept. 26, 2007

GAAP Goes Interactive

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced Tuesday that it has completed the development of data tags for the entire system of U.S. generally accepted accounting principles, an important step towards putting in place its agenda for interactive data, or XBRL.The development of data tags for ...

By Alan Rappeport • Sept. 25, 2007

Spreadsheets: Fear No Evil

“Preventing Evil.” “Exorcising Evil.” “Towards Heaven.” The session titles at the annual meeting of the European Spreadsheet Risks Interest Group (Eusprig) in July seemed to promise sermons of fire and brimstone. They may not have delivered as much, but they featured plenty of cautionary tales to...

By Jason Karaian • Sept. 25, 2007

The High Cost of Clean Data

With several studies over the past three yearsshowing that chief information officers regardbusiness intelligence as their top priority, youmight expect a stronger CFO-CIO relationship tobe close at hand. But a recent Accenture surveyfound that CIOs regard funding limits as one ofthe top obstacle...

By Allan Richter • Sept. 20, 2007

Testing, Testing: Sun Asks Analysts to Wait

Asked during the dot-com boom if he was the most conservative executive at Sun Microsystems, CFO Mike Lehman replied that being “the guardian of disclosure and expectations” was part of his job.“I’m skeptical about companies that claim victories before they’re real,” he told CFO magazine in Augus...

By Tim Reason and Vincent Ryan • Sept. 7, 2007

Cox Cheers Big Board XBRL Launch

Touting the move as a “milestone in the evolution” of interactive financial filing, the Securities and Exchange Commission has announced that the NYSE Euronext is joining the small number of public companies using extensible business reporting language.Although the exchange will use XBRL for its ...

By Kate Plourd • Sept. 7, 2007

Back to the Drawing Board

Recent headlines may suggest that European companies are retreating from their offshoring strategies. But the facts are more complicated.The trouble seems to be mostly with the public-facing end of businesses. For example, Lloyds TSB, the UK’s fifth-largest bank with a revenue of £10.7 billion (€...

By Eila Rana • Sept. 1, 2007

Back to School

Teens chattering their way into Abercrombie & Fitch stores for back-to-school clothes this year were greeted by two things: the iconic retailer’s heavily stylized decor — dark lighting, wood-shuttered windows, pulsing music — and, with few exceptions, the exact size and color of fleece pullov...

By Randy Myers • Sept. 1, 2007

Software as a Serpent

Gartner analyst Robert Desisto recently predicted that by 2011 fully a quarter of new business software will be delivered as a service. That’s a startling percentage given that the current generation of on-demand software has been around for just four to five years. But that’s long enough for som...

By John Edwards • Sept. 1, 2007