Checkups on Providers Miss the Mark

SAS-70 audits assess the internal controls, in particular the data-security controls, of outsourcing providers. These checks have become a regular part of Section 404 compliance. The problem is, they cost a lot, and “it isn’t clear that they are all that effective,” says Jonathan G. Gossels, pres...

By Rob Garver • Sept. 1, 2006

Def on the Aisle

Despite the hype, viewing television on a high-definition liquid crystal display isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Hi-def content is limited, moving images tend to blur on screen, and standard-definition programs look like they’ve been run through a taffy puller.But retailers love hi-def sets, and...

By Russ Banham • Sept. 1, 2006

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

How To Keep Your Audience Awake

Anyone who’s ever given a presentation or made a speech knows it’s a bad sign when audience members start quietly tapping away at personal electronic devices. That can only mean they’ve tuned out and are checking e-mail or playing Tetris on their cell phones.But a company called Turning Technolog...

By John P. Mello Jr. • Aug. 28, 2006

CFOs and Gadgets: A Love/Hate Relationship

Executives are rarely seen without their PDA or cell phone — whether they’re on the subway, in their car, or buying bread at the grocery store. But they’d like to be.All the time, day and night, 81 percent of executives are connected to their work through their mobile devices, including laptops a...

By Sarah Johnson • Aug. 24, 2006

Spreadsheet by Google?

Move over, Excel — but not too far. There’s a new spreadsheet in town, it’s from arch-rival Google, and it’s free.It is also, even by Google’s admission, rudimentary and likely to stay that way, and very unlikely to win the hearts, minds, or keystrokes of Excel power users.Still, the concept — a ...

By Esther Shein • Aug. 21, 2006

Another XBRL Nudge from the SEC

The Securities and Exchange Commission continues gently pressuring companies to adopt XBRL. On Monday, the SEC issued a formal request to software vendors for help in developing an XBRL-based analytical tool that it could add to the Website where public company financial filings are posted.XBRL, ...

By Tim Reason and Alix Stuart • Aug. 14, 2006

What’s the Big Idea?

Like most drug makers, Inspire Pharmaceuticals lives and dies by its ability to deliver valuable new medicines. Figuring out whether to advance or kill an idea, however, has gotten harder. Not only has the company’s product portfolio grown, so too has the range of factors that come into play when...

By Yasmin Ghahremani • Aug. 14, 2006

When Talk Isn’t Cheap

As blogging’s popularity rises, some major companies, including Sun Microsystems and IBM, are encouraging employees to contribute to company-backed Websites. Some even let them rant — Microsoft’s Robert Scoble, for example, a popular blogger who stepped down this past summer to work at video-blog...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Aug. 10, 2006

Is Your Blackberry a Hacker’s Back Door?

BlackBerry is in the news again. This time, the buzz surrounds a soon-to-be-released hacking program aimed at the tool. But don’t worry. Like the threatened shutdown of Blackberries this past winter, this new threat may do little more than highlight the ubiquity of the devices.The program, BBProx...

By Helen Shaw • Aug. 8, 2006

XBR-What?

It has been heralded as an invention that rivals the bar code and color TV. Internet pioneer Leonard Kleinrock believes we will be “surprised and even amazed” by it. Xerox CEO Anne Mulcahy has drawn a link between it and the French Revolution, invoking Victor Hugo’s famous line that “no army can ...

By Alix Stuart • Aug. 1, 2006

High Anxiety

Paul Wilde is a big believer in data protection. As CFO of Corillian Corp., he almost has to be. The Hillsboro, Oregon-based company delivers financial services and products to banks via the Internet. As such, the company not only stores data about customers, it also has access to information abo...

By Elaine Appleton Grant • Aug. 1, 2006

High Anxiety

Paul Wilde is a big believer in data protection. As CFO of Corillian Corp., he almost has to be. The Hillsboro, Oregon-based company delivers financial services and products to banks via the Internet. As such, the company not only stores data about customers, it also has access to information abo...

By Elaine Appleton Grant • July 31, 2006

Help! I’m Your Laptop and I’ve Been Stolen

Judy Rollins, career and technology education director for the Mesquite Independent School District in Mesquite, Texas, knows a thing or two about losing laptops. Last March, she lost eight of them in a single day. “Lost” may not be the right word. The machines, worth a combined $11,000, were sto...

By John Edwards • July 31, 2006

Open-source CRM Software Carves a Niche

The Oregon Department of Human Services was in a bind. Charged with administering the state’s Medicaid assistance program, the department needed a way to more efficiently manage information coming in from tens of thousands of providers. It needed something it could deploy quickly. And cheaply.So ...

By Esther Shein • July 24, 2006

Software Users (Slightly) More Willing To Pay

Software piracy is a source of pain for both software makers and users; the former suffer a hit to the top line, and the latter can be hit with a raft of fines. Many companies don’t even realize that some of the software they use has not been legally obtained. Others, of course, do.While piracy r...

By John Edwards • July 17, 2006

In With The New

Being under siege is nothing new at HMV. The £1.9 billion (€2.7 billion) UK retailer of music, books and movies has seen its market attacked by the likes of Amazon.com and other internet discounters since e-commerce took off some ten years ago. Plenty of pure-play online competitors have come and...

By Jason Karaian • July 10, 2006

Power Source

The first time Don Points visited Kramer Junction, California, he didn’t know what to expect. It was 2001, and the retired finance executive had booked a tour of Solel Corp.’s solar thermal power plant in the Mojave Desert. Although Points had heard about solar electric-generating plants from his...

By John Goff • July 1, 2006

Home Delivery

In the pantheon of unwelcome messages delivered to finance chiefs, “We forgot to bill the client” is number five (right between “J.J. smeared pudding all over your Treo” and “Legal says you got a notice from some guy named Wells”). When Campus Televideo president and CFO Brian Benz found out that...

By Yasmin Ghahremani • July 1, 2006

Angry and Bored? You Must Be a Customer

GE Capital Solutions has high expectations for its customers: it wants them to be so pleased with the company that they sing its praises to others. So the financial-services unit of General Electric sends out a brief survey that asks, ultimately, “Are you likely to recommend us to friends and col...

By Russ Banham • July 1, 2006

ROI Trumps Innovation for Software Users

Software applications that reduce the costs of making complex products have found great favor with the software vendors that provide them and the companies that use them. However, the two most common names used to describe these applications — product life-cycle management (PLM) software and digi...

By John Edwards • June 26, 2006

Taking Offshoring Beyond Labor Cost Savings

Most global executives know by now that offshoring can deliver more than just labor cost savings. A good offshore strategy should also generate new revenues, increase capital productivity, and manage risk in ways that would be unaffordable in home markets. But in many sectors, relatively few exec...

By The McKinsey Quarterly • June 19, 2006

Park Anywhere

Like many executives, Joseph Muscari spends a considerable amount of time on the road — the CFO of Alcoa Inc. made nine trips to China alone last year.And in true road-warrior fashion, he does not travel light when it comes to electronics. Standard components of his arsenal include a Lenovo Think...

By John Goff • June 1, 2006

GE, Pepsi Join SEC Data Pilot

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced Tuesday that three more companies have joined the commission’s pilot program to furnish their financial information in XBRL format, bringing the total number of companies in the program to 20.XBRL — which stands for eXtensible Business Reporting La...

By Stephen Taub • May 24, 2006

Trash Talk

By the time your company’s computersare ready for the scrap heap, they aren’t just worthless,they’re liabilities. Businesses spend about $30 to retirean out-of-date PC, according to figures compiled bytechnology research firm Gartner. Add to that the cost ofbacking up and “sanitizing” (that is, e...

By John Edwards • May 15, 2006

Ready or Not, XBRL Is Coming

Testifying before the Senate Banking Committee Tuesday, Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Christopher Cox found it difficult to keep from straying onto his pet topic. “I’m tempted to go off on a riff on all the benefits of interactive data,” he said in answer to one question about mutua...

By Tim Reason • April 27, 2006