Old Dogs, New Clicks

Executives who think that the dot-com collapse, channel conflict, and consumer fears of identity theft have combined to make E-commerce strategy a low priority should think again. Ten years after Amazon.com and eBay made “E-tail” a household word, companies in many industries are taking a second ...

By Russ Banham • June 22, 2005

Red Light/Green Light for Tech Spending

When Libbie Bock weighs the costs and benefits of technology projects at The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc., she gets closer to the process than most of her peers. Bock is chief financial officer of The Hartford’s 2,000 strong information-technology unit — literally a CFO of IT. In that a...

By Russ Banham • June 8, 2005

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

Version Therapy

Finance chiefs know the drill well. A salesman for a software vendor, eager to convince a CFO to OK an upgrade to the vendor’s latest release, puts on a full-court press. The calls are endless, the promises grandiose. But the salesman’s arguments are well honed, persuasive. The new software addre...

By John Edwards • June 7, 2005

India Still No. 1 Outsourcing Haven

Even as more and more countries ramp up as prime outsourcing posts, the current total value of outsourcing to India is estimated at $17.2 billion, or 44 percent of the worldwide total, according to a report from India’s National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom).About 80 per...

By Stephen Taub • June 3, 2005

Power Steering

A balance of powers, clear accountability, a framework for decision-making: these are some of the fundamental building blocks of good governance. They apply just as much to the boardroom as they do to the halls of Congress, and thanks to Sarbanes-Oxley, companies have spent plenty of time address...

By Bob Violino • June 1, 2005

Offshoring: The VC Made Me Do It

“What’s your offshoring strategy?”Many early-stage companies are hearing this not from angry constituents bemoaning the loss of jobs overseas, but from venture capitalists whose feeling may be quite the contrary. In fact, it’s one of the first questions that VCs may ask certain companies before t...

By John P. Mello Jr. • May 25, 2005

Bank Data Stolen

Two new reports of stolen customer and employees data were released this morning, following last week’s reports of an intensifying federal investigation of a hacker break-in at LexisNexis.In one case, former bank employees from Bank of America Corp. and Wachovia Corp. allegedly sold customer acco...

By Stephen Taub • May 23, 2005

VoIP to Go

As Wi-Fi hotspots blossom around the world, a growing number of people have discovered that they can use their laptops not only to browse the web and read email, but also to make cut-rate phone calls. Perhaps you’ve seen them, poised over their machines in coffee bars, airport lounges, hotel lobb...

By John Edwards • May 18, 2005

New Holes for Hackers

February 18, 2005, CNET News.com: A version of the Cabir virus has turned up in two Nokia 6600s on display in a California cell phone store, in what is believed to be the first “on-the-ground” sighting of the virus in the United States.In a month filled with front-page stories about breached data...

By John Goff • May 4, 2005

A Passage of Dell Jobs to India

Underscoring its long-term commitment to offshore outsourcing, computer giant Dell said it would hire 2,000 people in India within a year to perform software development and back-office work, according to the Associated Press. “It has been a very exciting time here in India, running customer supp...

By Stephen Taub • May 2, 2005

Most Companies Happy with HR Outsourcing

Most large companies have embraced human-resources outsourcing, according to a survey by Hewitt Associates of 129 large businesses representing nearly two million employees.Hewitt, which provides outsourcing and consulting services, found that 94 percent of respondents outsource at least one HR f...

By Stephen Taub • April 20, 2005

A Touchy Subject

With issues of security, identity, and privacy preoccupying government officials, corporate executives, employees, and consumers, it’s hard to imagine a technology more in tune with its times than biometrics. Because it can confirm an individual’s identity through such unique biological features ...

By Norm Alster • April 20, 2005

Make Room for Lease Accounting Software

Retail commercial leases are far more complicated than residential leases, says Paula Rosenblum, a director at research firm Aberdeen Group. In addition to common area maintenance, retailers must also contend with calculating taxes as well as percentage-rent and escalation clauses. Lease managers...

By Esther Shein • April 18, 2005

An Ounce of Prevention for Phone Viruses

A recent spate of electronic infections is giving new meaning to the familiar question, “Can you hear me now?”Strictly speaking, Cabir, Lasco, and Commwarrior are “worms,” not viruses, that target the Symbian operating system used on Nokia series 60 cell phones, which account for about half of al...

By Esther Shein • April 13, 2005

People Problems

In the software universe, a warm fuzzy place filled with flextime and endless rows of foosball tables, acquisitions are generally lovey-dovey affairs, gentle bondings that produce synergies and shareholder value and rivers of free fudge for all concerned. And then there’s Oracle’s acquisition of ...

By Russ Banham • April 6, 2005

Pay-per-view Budgeting?

Other than iron lungs and bowling shoes, few things in this world are best rented. That statement extends to business software as well. Thin-client computing did spark some interest in rentable software in the late 1990s, but other than some CRM and HR titles, the apps-on-tap approach never reall...

By Esther Shein • April 5, 2005

A World of Pain Points

When Grand & Toy, Canada’s largest supplier of office products, saw some of its commercial customers defecting to American big-box invaders like Staples and Office Depot, the Toronto-based company brought in a secret weapon: Defector Detector. The software program helps Grand & Toy fight ...

By Connie Winkler • March 29, 2005

”Lost and Found” IT: Taxi Drivers’ View

Because IT plays such a central role at both the macro and micro level of American business, it is perhaps the most heavily scrutinized, analyzed, and surveyed sector of the economy. Everyone from research scientists to vendors to end users is constantly being polled about new technologies, spend...

By CFO Editorial Staff • March 16, 2005

The New Face of Identity Theft

In January 2004, the MyDoom computer virus proved so malicious that Microsoft and other companies offered hundreds of thousands of dollars in reward money for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the virus author. Is it possible that those were the good old days?As this year began,...

By Peter Krass • March 16, 2005

Trouble from Atlanta to Paris

When last we wrote about Paris Hilton…actually, we’ve never written about Ms. Hilton and were quite prepared to remain the only magazine in America never to do so. But when her name suddenly cropped up in a number of newspaper stories that also contained phrases like “computer security and foren...

By Scott Leibs • March 15, 2005

From Tags to Riches?

It’s been a bit of a slog for XBRL, the computer code that “tags” a wide range of financial data so that it can be more easily shared and analyzed. Although proponents of the technology have been banging the drum for years, not much has happened. That may change this month, when a voluntary progr...

By CFO Editorial Staff • March 15, 2005

Demo in the Desert

If you really want to learn about the newest and most promising technologies, forget about the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), that techno-glamourama held each January in Las Vegas. Instead, pay attention to a smaller, less flamboyant event called Demo.Both technology events meet each winter in ...

By John Edwards • March 9, 2005

This Time, It’s Strategic

It’s time to look under the human-resources hood again. After an extensive technology overhaul in HR, employees now routinely use a number of self-service applications to complete tasks like enrolling in benefits programs, managing vacation time, and making sure their personal information is up t...

By Scott Leibs • March 8, 2005

iPods at the Office

The ubiquity of the iPod has made its maker, Apple Computer Inc., the world’s top brand. The company received a Valentine last month from marketing research firm Interbrand, which named the Silicon Valley pioneer the most recognizable brand on the planet. Apple, which topped the survey two years ...

By Russ Banham • March 2, 2005

This Is Progress?

A few months back, an executive in the software industry received an unexpected E-mail — a message from a former classmate whom he hadn’t heard from in years. It was easy for the ex-classmate to track him down: a Google search on almost any senior executive (or anyone residing in the troposphere,...

By Scott Leibs • March 1, 2005