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

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

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

Around the World in Data Tag

Representatives of securities regulators from around the world gathered Tuesday with Christopher Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to compare notes on the progress of interactive data-tagging in their countries.Most were effusive in their praise of the new technology, also ...

By Alan Rappeport • June 10, 2008

Tech Takes Off

If CFOs feel finance is unappreciated by the rest of the company, spare a thought for CIOs. As companies invest more in technology — research firm IDC predicts global IT spend to total $1.4 trillion (€87 billion) in 2008 — the nagging doubts harboured by their colleagues about whether IT creates ...

By Tim Burke • June 2, 2008

How Green Is Your IT?

For Andrew Griffith, CFO of British Sky Broadcasting, the £4.5 billion (€5.7 billion) FTSE 100 media company 39% owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, giving the green light to a new data centre wasn’t as straightforward at it once was. Although the need for additional data storage capacity...

By Eila Rana • June 2, 2008

Less Bleeding, More Edge

Most analysts expect information-technology spending to increase about 2 percent this year, and in April research firm IDC found evidence that spending may actually decline slightly. Either way, IT still represents a huge corporate expense, accounting for about half of all capital spending and ex...

By Bob Violino • June 1, 2008

Waste Management Hauls SAP to Court

Let the trash talk begin. In March, Waste Management Inc. filed a lawsuit against SAP, accusing the enterprise-resource-planning-software powerhouse of fraud. The suit claims that SAP deliberately misrepresented a revenue-management application, positioning it as a mature, out-of-the-box solution...

By Karen M. Kroll • June 1, 2008

Why Do They Buy?

“I know half the money I spend on advertising is wasted,” department-store magnate John Wanamaker famously said. “I just don’t know which half.” That old saw holds true; measuring the ROI of advertising remains extremely difficult, which may be why, in a slowing economy, ad budgets are among the ...

By Yasmin Ghahremani • June 1, 2008

But for You I’ll Charge an Additional 10 Percent

In 2003, senior management at Emerson, a diversified manufacturing and technology company, realized there was a short circuit in its operations. Prices for the company’s broad line of electrical products were declining year after year, and while savvy materials management helped to compensate, th...

By Yasmin Ghahremani • June 1, 2008

Spreadsheet “Worst Practices”

There’s little doubt that electronic spreadsheets are the most widely-used financial software application. But they are also the most-abused.It takes some effort — often a lot of effort — to develop and maintain sound, proper, and effective spreadsheet practices. The spreadsheet’s very ease of us...

By Richard Block and Shahid Ansari • May 14, 2008

SEC Maps Interactive Data-filing Mandate

The Securities and Exchange Commission voted unanimously Wednesday to propose a rule requiring companies — by as early as next year — to file financial statements in an “interactive data” format.The proposed schedule is a landmark moment for interactive data-tagging, using the system known as XB...

By Alan Rappeport • May 14, 2008

It’s Alive: Data-tagging Plan Expected Wednesday

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox is expected Wednesday to announce a long-awaited plan to mandate companies to file their financial statements in an interactive data-tagging format.Also known as XBRL, for extensible business reporting language, the data-tagging technolo...

By Alan Rappeport • May 13, 2008

Effort of Duplication

Making copies isn’t brain surgery, but at Florida’s Health First chain of hospitals it had become what chief information officer Richard Rogers describes as a “convoluted mess.” Nursing stations were overrun by copiers, fax machines, and printers, taking up precious counter space and impeding day...

By Yasmin Ghahremani • May 1, 2008

General Ledger vs. Major Opportunity

When the Apple iPhone became the must-have gadget among affluent technophiles last year, AT&T braced for the onslaught. As the exclusive U.S. carrier, it knew demand would be high, and it was: 4 million units sold in the first 200 days.But AT&T knew more than that. Eighteen hours after th...

By Scott Leibs • May 1, 2008

FEI on Data Tagging: No Benefit to CFOs

For the past few years, XBRL advocates — including Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Christopher Cox, service providers, and some early adopters — have claimed that both companies and investors will reap advantages from data-tagged financial statements. What they have not been saying is...

By Sarah Johnson • April 11, 2008

Firewall of Silence

When Société Générale revealed in January that it had lost more than $7 billion due to fraudulent trading activity, most of the headlines focused on “rogue trader” Jerome Kerviel, framing him either as a criminal or a reckless striver. His “perp walk” was eagerly anticipated by a horde of cameram...

By Scott Leibs • April 1, 2008

Crunching the Words

When auditors seek evidence of fraud, they take a careful look at a company’s financial statements. Maybe they should examine other statements, such as those uttered by company executives.That’s the theory behind new fraud-detection software developed by two professors at Virginia Tech, who say t...

By Avital Louria Hahn • April 1, 2008

A Small-Company CFO’s Take on XBRL

Gregory Hanson, CFO of Adventrx Pharmaceuticals, is intrigued by the benefits that regulators claim interactive-data technology could provide to companies and investors. He’s already gone to the trouble of getting estimates for how much service providers would charge his $50-million market-cap co...

By Sarah Johnson • March 17, 2008

Spreading Its Wings

Tim Coakley, CFO of Agfa’s North American health-care business, is in no hurry to use an offshore outsourcer. A few years ago, executives at his parent company — a Belgian imaging-technology specialist — had considered offshoring some processes, but decided to focus on operational performance imp...

By Kate O'Sullivan • March 3, 2008

Web 2.0, Confusion 1.5

When a photograph of a flaming laptop computer circulated on the Internet in the summer of 2006, Dell Computer quickly got a two-part lesson in the power of Web 2.0.The lesson had little to do with the risks of an extended supply chain (the fire was the result of a faulty battery made by a third ...

By Scott Leibs • March 1, 2008

Who’s Where, When (and How Much)?

Having cut costs substantially through the use of online travel services, in 2004 Xerox began to explore the idea of doing the same for its many meetings and events. The company was ahead of its time, because as recently as last year analysts were still pointing to employee and client meetings an...

By Scott Leibs • March 1, 2008

New SEC Tool Helps Investors Analyze Financials

On Friday the Securities and Exchange Commission unveiled a tool on its Website designed to help investors quickly and easily analyze the financial results of public companies that reported information using eXtensible business reporting language, or XBRL.Dubbed “Financial Explorer,” it takes inf...

By Alan Rappeport • Feb. 15, 2008

SEC Told to Mandate XBRL

A Securities and Exchange Commission advisory committee is paving the way for the regulator to require companies to turn their traditional financial statements into more easily searchable, comparable, and interactive documents.If the SEC takes the committee’s advice, all U.S. publicly traded comp...

By Sarah Johnson • Feb. 11, 2008