Technology: Page 35

  • Robotic process automation as an innovation improving productivity, reliability and repeatability in systems
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    Junk the ”Junk Email” Law?

    January 1 marked three years since the implementation of the cleverly named federal law on Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing, better known as CAN-SPAM. But according to companies that combat unwanted email, electronic spam has an even longer shelf life than the lu...

    By John P. Mello Jr. • Feb. 26, 2007
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    A Cash Call

    Some of the hottest nightclubs have a new trick for checking the identity of their VIP guests: they send an entry pass in the form of a super barcode to their mobile phones. This is scanned by the large gentleman who lifts the velvet rope. Even those who must pay to get in may need their handsets...

    By Economist Staff • Feb. 16, 2007
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    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
  • Robotic process automation as an innovation improving productivity, reliability and repeatability in systems
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    Brain Gain

    In the late 1970s, still the early years for Sophia Antipolis — France’s first “technopolis,” located near Nice on the Côte d’Azur — the science park’s founder, Pierre Laffitte, asked a top official of Chase Manhattan Bank in Chicago if he knew of any companies that might be interested in setting...

    By Tony McAuley • Feb. 15, 2007
  • Robotic process automation as an innovation improving productivity, reliability and repeatability in systems
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    A Truce in the Sarbox Tech War?

    Since companies began complying with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, one common complaint about auditor scrutiny has been loud and clear: external auditors have spent too much time on technology systems that seem unrelated to financial statements.It’s an issue that has been confusing for both sides. The ...

    By Sarah Johnson • Feb. 9, 2007
  • Robotic process automation as an innovation improving productivity, reliability and repeatability in systems
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    Web Deux Point Zéro

    “If France was more like Netvibes, things might be a lot better here,” says Tariq Krim, with disarming frankness. The website, which he runs out of Paris, is the most popular of a new class that lets users snap together individual components such as blog feeds, e-mail accounts, news headlines and...

    By Economist Staff • Feb. 5, 2007
  • Robotic process automation as an innovation improving productivity, reliability and repeatability in systems
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    NicoElNino. Retrieved from Shutterstock.
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    Crossing Over

    Two years ago, CFO hired a new IT employee, an under-25 staffer who sat in an open cubicle. Due to the placement of his desk, the employee’s work habits were easily observed by colleagues. We watched with quiet amusement as this scion of Generation Y went about his work each day. The routine was ...

    By Russ Banham • Feb. 1, 2007
  • Robotic process automation as an innovation improving productivity, reliability and repeatability in systems
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    Why Did the Chicken Cross the Atlantic?

    Parts may be parts in the chicken business, but it’s still not common practice for U.S. restaurant chains to send large chunks of their finance and accounting (F&A) operation to India. Nevertheless, at the beginning of the year, international fast-food restaurant Church’s Chicken outsourced a...

    By Theresa Sullivan Barger • Jan. 26, 2007
  • Robotic process automation as an innovation improving productivity, reliability and repeatability in systems
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    Peaks, Valleys, and Vistas

    Around the time of the release of Windows 95, Microsoft discreetly sold a small subsidiary that made its packaging. A decade ago that decision seemed to fit with the progression of computing and the nascent internet. Although people all over the world stood in long lines to be the first to buy bo...

    By Economist Staff • Jan. 22, 2007
  • Robotic process automation as an innovation improving productivity, reliability and repeatability in systems
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    The Check Is in the Web

    KeySpan, a Brooklyn, N.Y., energy utility, had trouble paying its bills. The problem, however, was paper, not money: the company’s accounts-payable department was wallowing in paperwork, processing up to 300,000 invoices each year. It was mired in a five-day backlog and missing out on vendor disc...

    By John Edwards • Jan. 17, 2007
  • Robotic process automation as an innovation improving productivity, reliability and repeatability in systems
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    AS5: Clarification or Confusion?

    On paper, a new standard proposed by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board appears to address the concerns of companies that felt auditors spent too much time scrutinizing their internal controls and technology systems. Critics of the existing and much-contested Auditing Standard No. 2 ha...

    By Sarah Johnson • Jan. 12, 2007
  • Robotic process automation as an innovation improving productivity, reliability and repeatability in systems
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    Even Better Than the Real Thing

    Over the past two decades, videoconferencing has earned a bad reputation in the business world. Despite claims of new-and-improved technology from vendors, the act of conferencing via video hook-up has left a lot to be desired. Indeed, participating in a videoconference with the team in Tokyo is ...

    By Esther Shein • Jan. 4, 2007
  • Robotic process automation as an innovation improving productivity, reliability and repeatability in systems
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    Follow the E-mail Trail

    Ask Jeffrey J. Greenbaum, a litigation partner at Sills Cummis Epstein & Gross PC, to describe the new electronic-discovery statutes recently added to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and he doesn’t hesitate. “It’s a wake-up call for corporations,” he says, “particularly those that have ...

    By John Edwards • Jan. 4, 2007
  • Robotic process automation as an innovation improving productivity, reliability and repeatability in systems
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    Computer on a Stick

    What do Fidelity Investments, Boeing, Ameriprise Financial, the YMCA, and the U.S. Department of Transportation all have in common?Those are just a few of the organizations that suffered serious breaches of customer data or other confidential information when a company laptop was stolen or lost i...

    By John P. Mello Jr. • Dec. 29, 2006
  • Robotic process automation as an innovation improving productivity, reliability and repeatability in systems
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    Free Admission, No Tuition

    Need a refresher course on accounting for derivatives? Thanks to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and its burgeoning OpenCourseWare program, executives can now go back to school without entering a classroom.OCW is a free educational resource that gives self-learners access to course mate...

    By Gareth Goh • Dec. 29, 2006
  • Robotic process automation as an innovation improving productivity, reliability and repeatability in systems
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    Best of 2006: Technology

    In the life of a CFO, technology falls somewhere between an enormous opportunity and an enormous migraine. There’s the perennial question of whether tech investments ever deliver their promised ROI (or whether information technology personnel even understand the term). And, in 2006, CFOs dealt wi...

    By CFO Editorial Staff • Dec. 21, 2006
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    In a Fix

    You wouldn’t know it by thecompany that he works for, but GijsHoutzagers doesn’t like to take risks, at leastnot when it comes to IT. When he joinedHolland Casino, a €681m company that runs13 casinos in the Netherlands, in 2002, hesays its PeopleSoft ERP system was “in a bitof a mess” and some bo...

    By Jason Karaian • Dec. 18, 2006
  • Robotic process automation as an innovation improving productivity, reliability and repeatability in systems
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    Who Do You Trust?

    The recent spying scandal at Hewlett-Packard garneredplenty of headlines — withgood reason. The episode, essentially aclandestine operation intended to plugpress leaks, harkened back to the tactics ofthe Nixon Administration and its infamousPlumbers unit.Despite the dubious morality andlegality o...

    By Esther Shein • Dec. 18, 2006
  • Robotic process automation as an innovation improving productivity, reliability and repeatability in systems
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    NicoElNino. Retrieved from Shutterstock.
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    E-Proxies to Debut in 2007

    It’s sort of a paper independence day. As of July 1, 2007, companies will be able to offer proxy statements and annual reports on the Internet, thanks to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s unanimous adoption of a proposed rule. Investors partial to paper need not fear, however. The “SEC wil...

    By Helen Shaw • Dec. 14, 2006
  • Robotic process automation as an innovation improving productivity, reliability and repeatability in systems
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    Paper Tigers

    Log on to any public company’s Website and with relative ease you can access current financial data, including regulatory filings. It’s so easy, in fact, that for the past five years corporations have been campaigning to do away with the slick, costly annual reports they mail to shareholders.The ...

    By Sarah Johnson • Dec. 11, 2006
  • Robotic process automation as an innovation improving productivity, reliability and repeatability in systems
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    NicoElNino. Retrieved from Shutterstock.
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    Jet Blue

    In August 1959, Pan American Airlinesbegan offering nonstop service from New York’s Idlewildairport to London’s Heathrow. By all accounts, thetransatlantic trip — which took about seven and a halfhours on a Boeing 707-320 — was a testament to comfort,sophistication, and gracious traveling.It’s be...

    By Elaine Appleton Grant • Dec. 1, 2006
  • Robotic process automation as an innovation improving productivity, reliability and repeatability in systems
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    The View from the Other Side

    These days, many CIOs in Asia are in a frenzy over America’s Sarbanes-Oxley Act, or Sarbox. Not Daniel Lai, chief information officer of Hong Kong subway operator MTRC. In mid-2000, he and his team started developing an enterprise-wide IT governance system that aimed to document, monitor, and con...

    By Cesar Bacani • Nov. 30, 2006
  • Robotic process automation as an innovation improving productivity, reliability and repeatability in systems
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    Going Mobile: Is Your Data at Risk?

    A new study has raised concerns that the proliferation of mobile devices could cause a surge in regulatory compliance violations and security threats. Executives are trusting PDAs and cell phones with important corporate information but aren’t safeguarding the devices properly, the study conclude...

    By Stephen Taub • Nov. 27, 2006
  • Robotic process automation as an innovation improving productivity, reliability and repeatability in systems
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    SAS 70 Weak on Data Security: Experts

    Mention the term SAS 70 in a roomful of accountants and business executives, and the conversation is likely to escalate into a chorus of disparate voices, all rendering different takes on the auditing standard.Indeed, the contentiousness surrounding the auditing standard has deep roots. Underlyin...

    By Jabulani Leffall • Nov. 27, 2006
  • Robotic process automation as an innovation improving productivity, reliability and repeatability in systems
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    Back Office for Sale

    Companies that have opted to build whollyowned shared-service centers instead of outsourcingback-office functions may be sitting on gold mines.Eager to gain scale in aconsolidating industry, serviceproviders are searching forsellers. In September, Capgemini bought 51 percent of Unilever’s Indianc...

    By Don Durfee • Nov. 21, 2006
  • Robotic process automation as an innovation improving productivity, reliability and repeatability in systems
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    When Robots Write the News

    As if having their jobs outsourced to India weren’t badenough, finance journalists now face a new threat: software programsthat can write stories in less than a second.Thomson Financial has developed a computerized systemthat “reads” earnings releases and produces news articles basedon their cont...

    By Kate O'Sullivan • Nov. 20, 2006