Bitten by an ASP

The ongoing opera starring Oracle, PeopleSoft, and J.D. Edwards, has many IT-watchers (this one included) predicting a consolidation in the technology sector. Indeed, if Oracle’s hostile takeover bid for rival PeopleSoft is approved by government regulators and PeopleSoft shareholders, it will ve...

By CFO Staff and John Goff • July 3, 2003

Buyer Be Aware

Because it’s nearly impossible to draw precise boundary lines around technology categories, companies that sell software are often free to ride the wave of whatever three-letter acronym happens to be hot at the moment. As a result, a panoply of software products continues to crowd into the CRM (c...

By Alix Stuart • July 1, 2003

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

SARS: A Preview of Things to Come?

Back when companies actually feared Y2K, Convergys Corp. put in place a business-continuity plan that designated “incident commanders” at each of its more than 40 sites to handle emergencies. Now those same commanders are tackling a new, and possibly more virulent, threat — Severe Acute Respirato...

By Joseph McCafferty • July 1, 2003

A Piece Plan for ERP

One of the most vexing IT issues facing large companies is deciding when and how to integrate the disparate “instances” of ERP software scattered throughout the organization. AMR Research suggests that companies begin by asking why. In studying more than 60 companies in various stages of ERP cons...

By CFO Editorial Staff • June 16, 2003

Out with the Old, Somehow

When Huntington Bancshares bought 4,000 new personal computers last year, it held out some hope that the 2,000 old PCs and several hundred servers it was replacing would fetch something on the used-computer market. As it turned out, the bank literally could not give them away. “The machines are b...

By Norm Alster • June 16, 2003

Nothing to Hide

Grouse all you want about the costs and headaches of Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, but the new regulations are having a major and largely positive impact on the way many publicly traded companies view their investor relations (IR) function. CFOs and other senior executives, in fact, are now enlistin...

By Laton McCartney • June 16, 2003

The Matter at Hand

From medical schools to law firms to animal-feed companies to the halls of Congress, personal digital assistants (PDAs) are proliferating. The handheld computers that were once no more than gimmicky phone books are evolving into important business tools in a select group of workplaces.But the emp...

By Anne Stuart • June 15, 2003

IT Spending a Dud, Says Study

If information technology has lost some allure, at least it has plenty of company. A new book, What (Really) Works, tosses “IT investment” onto a vast scrap heap of 200 management practices that fail to drive value.In studying 160 companies over five years, the authors, William Joyce, Nitin Nohri...

By CFO Editorial Staff • June 15, 2003

Down but Not Out

Of all the Big Ideas spawned during the Internet boom, perhaps none blossomed so promisingly yet wilted so quickly as that of renting enterprise software over the Web. By some accounts, upward of 1,000 self-proclaimed application service providers, or ASPs, were launched during 1999 and 2000, wit...

By John Verity • June 15, 2003

An Exercise in Utility

“All analogies are false.” So intoned a history professor of mine, usually just before or after making an analogy. Analogies are extremely useful, even when, as creative-thinking expert Edward de Bono has noted, they don’t quite fit, because they provoke fresh ways of thinking about problems.One ...

By Scott Leibs • June 15, 2003

Everything Must Go

The millennium started poorly for North Face Corp. The company’s logo was ubiquitous on college campuses, yet the manufacturer, distributor, and retailer of outdoor apparel was nearly bankrupt, largely because of problems with its supply chain.“North Face was losing $100 million on $238 million o...

By Russ Banham • June 15, 2003

Grinding Away on ROI

As the economy resists any sustained bout of good news, most discussions of information technology continue to center on how to get the biggest return for the least investment. As a result, the ROI business is booming, with consultants continuing to hawk various forms of guidance, from simple for...

By Chuck Lenatti • June 15, 2003

Re: That Spam I Sent You

It’s hard to put a price-tag on what junk email is costing U.S. businesses. One company that specializes in blocking junk email claims spam costs U.S. businesses $10 billion each year in lost productivity. Of course, it’s not real likely that a company that specializes in blocking junk email woul...

By John Goff • June 12, 2003

Addicted to Options

According to a report in the well-respected San Jose Mercury News (well, we like it), tech salaries decreased in 2002. In fact, the Mercury News reports that the highest-paid executives at Silicon Valley’s largest companies took home $1 billion last year.While that may seem like a nice tidy sum, ...

By John Goff • June 5, 2003

The Summer of Our Content

“Content is king,” or so went one of the most common clichés of the dot-com era. But as companies generated ever more “content,” all that Web-site verbiage, not to mention reams of internal reports and other documents, started to seem less kingly and more of a royal pain. Often it can be so diffi...

By Doug Bartholomew • June 1, 2003

What XBRL Means For You

We know, we know. You’ve been hearing about the coming XBRL revolution for the past three years. So far, there’s been a lot more talking about the coming revolution than the coming of the coming revolution.But make no mistake, XBRL is going to substantially alter the financial software landscape....

By Scott Leibs and John Goff • May 29, 2003

Disaster Recovery: What, Us Worry?

With U.S. military forces now firmly in control of the whole of Iraq, the likelihood of terrorist reprisals against American interests seems high. Indeed, even as the government was lowering the terror alert level from Orange (high) to Yellow (elevated) last month, Homeland Security Secretary Tom...

By John Goff and Russ Banham • May 15, 2003

So What is a Centrino, Anyway?

You’ve probably already noticed television spots for Intel’s new mobile technology. Called Centrino, this processing platform for notebooks, PDAs and other portables, was launched amid tremendous fanfare in March. At the time, Mike Splinter, executive vice president at Intel, reportedly called Ce...

By John Goff • May 8, 2003

Design and Conquer

While ERP systems are often viewed as all-encompassing, particularly for companies in the manufacturing sector, new software is emerging that tackles a broad range of functions largely untouched by traditional applications. Dubbed PLM, for product life-cycle management, the software manages produ...

By Doug Bartholomew • May 1, 2003

Where Wireless Works

The phrase “mobile workforce” still conjures up images of smartly dressed executives hurrying through airport terminals while conferring with colleagues on cell phones and checking E-mails on their wireless-enabled PDAs.But when it comes to boosting the bottom line by “going mobile,” CFOs would b...

By Jason Karaian • May 1, 2003

CRM, As You Like It

“Know thyself,” wrote William Shakespeare half a millennium ago. Shakespeare recognized that we all have elusive wants, feelings, and frustrations that set each of us apart from everyone else. So when Dallas Teachers Credit Union wanted to grow its assets two years ago, it adapted a lesson from t...

By Russ Banham • May 1, 2003

Businesses Besieged by Spam

From the Nigerian civil servant hoping to move millions of dollars to offshore havens (with your help) to pitchmen hawking herbs and procedures that promise improbable anatomical transformation, junk E-mails now waste a few precious minutes of everyone’s day.Often referred to as “spam,” this onli...

By Tim Reason • April 1, 2003

Let There Be LEDs

CFOs who think they’ve maximized every technology investment their companies make should think again. While not, strictly speaking, a form of information technology, lighting does have an increasing technological aspect to it, particularly if it’s LEDs: light-emitting diodes. LEDs aren’t just for...

By CFO Editorial Staff • March 17, 2003

CRM: Once More, Without Reeling

The three letters “CRM” stand for customer relationship management, but given all the recent bad press CRM has been receiving, one might imagine they stand for “costly, rotten mistake.”How did we get here? CRM software, sold by a long list of vendors that includes Siebel, SAP, PeopleSoft, Onyx, P...

By Peter Krass • March 17, 2003

Quantum Loop

Business is booming at Erickson Retirement Communities Inc. Or, to be more precise, baby-booming. With an aging population about ready to bid farewell to the three-bedroom colonials of their middle years and take up residence elsewhere, the company anticipates substantial growth to its nationwide...

By Russ Banham • March 17, 2003