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

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

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

Power Scourge

If you thought computer hardware and software were expensive, consider that the electric bill for a data center caneat up 25 to 44 percent of its budget. That raises concerns not justabout the bottom line, but also about brownouts or blackouts. Arecent study by Stanford professor Jonathan Koomey ...

By Karen M. Kroll • Aug. 27, 2007

Ay, Caramba!

A recent survey from the American ManagementAssociation found that over the past fiveyears the number of companies that monitoremployee Internet use has risen 13 percent. Morethan three-fourths of employers now trackemployee Web use to some degree, and dozensof software companies offer programs t...

By Kate Plourd • Aug. 20, 2007

When Virtual Crises Turn Real

Inside the banking offices of Ginko Financial, an eerie crisis has developed. A collection of almost impossibly strapping men and buxom women, along with various furry creatures with wagging tails, crowd around a cash machine. But no cash can be drawn, and the teller windows are empty.“The threat...

By Alan Rappeport • Aug. 16, 2007

Will Outsourcing Fly?

Ask Philip Chu what he thinks of outsourcing, and he doesn’t hold much back. “We’ve tried it twice before, and the results were not good,” says the CFO of Datacraft, aSingapore-based IT service provider. His first try involved human resources. “Our HR function was spread across many countries and...

By Don Durfee • Aug. 14, 2007

Tickling the Keyboard: 10 Spreadsheet Tips

It may not be one of the seven wonders of the digital world, but for CFOs, nothing compares with Microsoft’s Excel for performing calculations, tracking a variety of business items, and making forecasts of what the future might hold in store. The problem is that the program is so complicated that...

By Brian Nadel • Aug. 13, 2007

Beyond Excel

Business modeling is crucial work at L’Oreal UK, which markets its array of cosmetics to British retailers — including supermarkets, a major drug store chain, and various specialty outlets. But while L’Oreal’s marketing team was up to the task of modeling and planning, its spreadsheet software wa...

By John Edwards • Aug. 9, 2007

Spreadsheets Are Free

A spreadsheet program that doesn’t cost anything and may even be better than Microsoft Excel? For Jeffrey Causey, president of Strategic Innovations, a Graham, N.C., company that provides strategic planning services to local governments and non-profit organizations, the opportunity sounded too go...

By John Edwards • Aug. 2, 2007

The Ultimate Test Drive

In 1927, the first cars rolled off the production line at fledgling Swedish automaker Volvo. The inaugural $800 sedan came in two versions: an open-bodied touring model and a “saloon” (that is, covered) model. Guess which one sold? Customers in Sweden, it turns out, were not enthusiastic about th...

By Esther Shein • Aug. 1, 2007

What’s Hot This Summer

Here at CFO, we get a lot of information from technology vendors offering products that promise to do everything from scrubbing your numbers to cleaning your computer screen. We dutifully evaluate these offerings so you don’t have to. Lo and behold, some actually merit a little ink.To winnow down...

By Esther Shein • Aug. 1, 2007

How Green Was My Tally

No sooner had Target Corp. announced inApril that it had installed solar systems atop 4California retail stores (with plans for more) thanWal-Mart announced a similar project for 22 of itsstores. Last year a nearly identical battle took placein Silicon Valley when Microsoft’s boast of having thel...

By Kate Galbraith • July 27, 2007

Report: Audit Inspectors Sidestepping Clunky System

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board was designed to keep a close eye on auditors, ensuring that their reports are informative, fair, and independent. But even the PCAOB must open up its books sometimes.This month it did so, as the board’s Internal Oversight and Performance Assurance uni...

By Alan Rappeport • July 25, 2007

Fix or Fraud?

A little more than five years ago, Richard E. Fresia was part of a new management team brought into the telecommunications subsidiary of utility company NorthWestern Corp. to help straighten out an ERP implementation gone horribly awry. On Monday, he was charged by the Securities and Exchange Com...

By Tim Reason • July 24, 2007

Patents Bending

The U.S. Supreme Court recently put the pedal to the metal in a case that manypatent experts say will accelerate a drive toward a more rigorous interpretation of“obviousness.” In KSR International Co. v. Teleflex Inc., the Court ruled unanimously that a Teleflex patent that combined an adjustable...

By Karen M. Kroll • July 23, 2007