IT Security Starts Between the Ears

Pitney Bowes, the company that once was in the uncomplicated business of supplying postage meters is now a $4.6 billion (in revenues) mail-and-document-management specialist. Yet despite an array of state-of-the-art firewalls, software, and encryption algorithms to fend off network invaders, the ...

By Russ Banham • Oct. 6, 2004

The Enemy Within

Back in the 1950s, when Pitney Bowes was in the uncomplicated business of supplying postage meters to U.S. corporations, the company’s big security concern was relatively pedestrian: now and then, somebody’s relative would walk off with a meter machine.Over the past 50 years, risk management at P...

By Russ Banham • Oct. 6, 2004

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

ERP: Tech Project or Business Project?

Most companies of a certain size — generally $100 million and above, although simplified ERP software is available for much smaller companies — find ERP virtually indispensable. ERP serves as an all-important information pipeline that links finance, manufacturing, logistics, sales, and other depa...

By Doug Bartholomew • Oct. 5, 2004

The ABC’s of ERP

Even as Y2K ushered in boom times for ERP vendors, they were beset by a string of negative press reports regarding the complexity and cost of getting their software to run effectively — assuming it could be made to run at all. ERP horror stories abounded, with Hershey Foods Corp.’s perhaps the be...

By Doug Bartholomew • Oct. 5, 2004

A Touchy Election Issue

As the Presidential election approaches, one of the hottest debates has nothing to do with the candidates. Instead, the controversy centers on the reliability of E-voting, which takes two forms: direct recording electronic (DRE) voting machines that provide touch-screen selection, and voting via ...

By Roxanne Khamsi • Sept. 30, 2004

Ripe for the Picking?

If you’re wondering whether it’s time for your company to join the wireless revolution, we have some news for you: it already has, for better and worse. During the past few years, thousands of cell phones, BlackBerry devices, pagers, wireless PDAs, and wireless-enabled laptops have almost certain...

By John McPartlin • Sept. 22, 2004

Can SOA Simplify IT?

While Moore’s Law and fierce competition among vendors virtually guarantee that your IT dollar will continuously gain in purchasing power, don’t let the good deals blind you to an underlying truth: the complexity of what you’re buying may be no bargain at all.New thinking may be called for, a new...

By John Verity • Sept. 21, 2004

GE Plans Sale of Outsourcing Unit

General Electric Co. is engaged in talks to sell all or part of GE Capital International Services (GECIS), its India-based call-center unit, reported The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the situation. The business-process-outsourcing operation could fetch as much as $1 billion.GE...

By Craig Schneider • Sept. 20, 2004

Money for (Almost) Nothing

Who remembers Flooz? Or Beenz? At the height of the dot-com craze, they were among the alternative currencies proposed as a way to facilitate low-value (typically $5 or less) electronic transactions.Early efforts failed, but the idea of an electronic payment that could be used for such transactio...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Sept. 20, 2004

Outsourcing on the Outs at JP Morgan Chase

About 4,000 technology workers and contractors currently employed by International Business Machines Corp. must be starting to feel a little dizzy.The workers had been transferred from JP Morgan Chase & Co. to IBM as part of an outsourcing agreement hailed as “the largest of its kind” less th...

By Ed Zwirn • Sept. 17, 2004

Not Sold on Themselves

With the holidays just…well, let’s not start counting down yet. But when they do arrive, they will no doubt extend what has become a new tradition: gauging the impact of online sales.Web shopping has many virtues and has shown strong gains from one year to the next, but one group is not particula...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Sept. 17, 2004

How Finance Should Partner with Tech

A recent survey by McKinsey & Co. found that the number of CIOs reporting to CFOs doubled in 2003, and the consultancy expects that trend to continue as companies look to get more value from IT. Other surveys have found similar results, and IT consulting companies and magazines are now bursti...

By Scott Leibs • Sept. 15, 2004

Safety, in Numbers

What price security? Somewhere between $110 and $334 per employee, depending on the size of your company.Economies of scale allow larger companies to spend less per employee, while companies in certain industries (transportation, high tech, and telecommunications, as well as federal and state gov...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Sept. 15, 2004

Coping with Complexity

While Moore’s Law and fierce competition among vendors virtually guarantee that your IT dollar will continuously gain in purchasing power, don’t let the good deals blind you to an underlying truth: the complexity of what you’re buying may be no bargain at all. In a recent study of more than 20 la...

By John Verity • Sept. 15, 2004

Look Who’s Talking

When Bobby Lie, now a senior vice president for enterprise architecture at Fidelity Investments, was in charge of usage-based billing, he had the largely thankless task of hitting up the financial-services company’s many business units for their respective shares of network expenditures. With net...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Sept. 15, 2004

Outsourcing Far Afield or Close to Home?

India remains the most popular information-technology offshoring location for U.S. companies, but observers say India’s period of competitive advantage may be waning. In fact, with local wages rising at a 20 percent annual clip, executives at companies from Bangalore to Brahmapur are reportedly b...

By John Edwards • Sept. 8, 2004

The Farthest Shore

Last year, when management at call-center services specialist LiveBridge Inc. was searching for a place to house the company’s Spanish-language operation, it looked south of the border — way south of the border. After considering the more traditional outsourcing venues in Latin America, the Portl...

By John Edwards • Sept. 8, 2004

Clean Machine

The two big changes in cars themselves over the next ten years will be in electronics and engines. Electronics are taking over more and more of a car’s controls, and are now making it possible to connect cars as well as drivers with the outside world. It is only a matter of time before the indust...

By Economist Staff • Sept. 3, 2004

From Factoids to Facts

What is the next stage in the evolution of internet search engines? AltaVista demonstrated that indexing the entire world wide web was feasible. Google’s success stems from its uncanny ability to sort useful web pages from dross. But the real prize will surely go to whoever can use the web to del...

By Economist Staff • Aug. 31, 2004

Gas Price Drop Lowers CPI

Moderate news on the inflation front and a Labor Department report showing that consumer prices actually fell in July gave comfort to investors who are worried about potential price hikes.The U.S. Labor Department reported a 0.1 percent drop in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for July, said the As...

By Ed Zwirn • Aug. 18, 2004

Technologies That Save You Some ‘Green’

It’s a win-win proposition: save money, save the planet. Companies today are discovering many ways to better balance energy consumption, waste disposal, employee productivity and morale, and their budgetary concerns. Here’s our sampling of green technologies that can save you some “green,” too; s...

By John Edwards • Aug. 18, 2004

Making a Market in Knowledge

Just like people, companies in today’s economy find that their primary source of competitive advantage increasingly lies in the unique proprietary knowledge they possess. Companies and individuals may have equal talent and access to public knowledge, but the special value that comes with unique u...

By The McKinsey Quarterly • Aug. 17, 2004

Offshore Savings Fall Short, Says Study

Savings from offshoring — especially payroll savings — are not nearly what’s they’re cracked up to be — according to a survey of 100 of the largest employers in New York City.“Companies may not be looking at the whole picture when they go offshore,” said Howard Rubin, a consultant and professor e...

By Stephen Taub • July 21, 2004

Big Rise in IT Outsourcing, Says Survey

A survey by an India-based outsourcing provider found that nearly three-quarters of companies expect to increase their outsourcing budget by at least 20 percent over the next year and a half.Patni Computer Systems Ltd. — which conducted the survey at a recent seminar in Hilton Head, South Carolin...

By Stephen Taub • July 20, 2004

Search Is On

On the Internet, the shortest distance between two points is a well-conceived search query. In fact, these days most “surfing” entails a hurried perusal of the first few sites returned by a search engine as you quickly try to find exactly what you’re looking for. Search is the glue that holds the...

By Peter Krass • July 20, 2004