Is the Worst Over for Chip Makers?

Goldman Sachs upgraded several semiconductor companies, according to The Wall Street Journal. A Goldman research note said that data points are no longer negative and that fundamentals will likely strengthen in the fourth quarter of 2001.Goldman allowed that the recovery may be “uneven, limited b...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Aug. 13, 2001

AOL’s Online Unit Faces Major Layoffs

Several hundred employees at the Dulles, Va. headquarters of AOL Time Warner’s Internet access unit could be laid off as early as Monday morning, according to The Wall Street Journal.The pending layoffs will be the second round to hit the division this year. In January, 725 people from a total wo...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Aug. 13, 2001

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

Geography and the Net: Putting It in Its Place

Brewster Kahle unlocks the cellar door of a wooden building in San Francisco’s Presidio Park. He steps inside, turns on the fluorescent lights to reveal a solid black wall of humming computers, and throws out his arm theatrically. “This”, he says, “is the web.” It is a seductive idea, but the web...

By Economist Staff • Aug. 1, 2001

Where Retailing Meets ERP Software

As recently as 1994, Pacific Sunwear of California was a largely regional chain with most of its 90 stores on the West Coast. But then the company underwent an aggressive expansion, and today it stands at 650 outlets. Now the firm plans to add 300 more stores during the next three years, and 1,00...

By Esther Shein • Aug. 1, 2001

Outsourcing’s Marriage Counselor

“Outsourcing is similar to a marriage.”Time and time again, you will hear this analogy used by experts when they describe outsourcing relationships.In other words, hard work and attention to the little things are critical to a successful arrangement. It’s not that smooth-as-silk road to riches.It...

By Michelle Gabrielle • Aug. 1, 2001

To Outsource or Not to Outsource

Chip Gliedman, research fellow at Giga Information Group, uses a four-pronged analysis when customers ask him for advice on whether or not they should outsource a particular project.He begins by addressing four distinct categories — cost, benefit, flexibility and risk — and then wades into each o...

By Lauren Gibbons Paul • Aug. 1, 2001

You’ve Got to Have Friends

Ray Arthur, CFO of Toysrus.com, is one of the few survivors of the online toy industry. Toysrus.com is poised to dominate the online toy market this coming holiday season and expects $300 million in revenues for fiscal 2001 — up more than 60 percent from last year. With close ties to parent Toys ...

By Kris Frieswick • Aug. 1, 2001

The Virtues of Virtual

At Ryder System Inc., human capital is precious. So when the $5 billion Miami-based logistics and transportation giant decided to overhaul its credit-approval process in 1999, it knew the solution could not entail a large boost in head count or add to the workload of current employees.Fortunately...

By Lauren Gibbons Paul • Aug. 1, 2001

Broadband Equals Positive Cash Flow

These days, Mark McEachen is getting phone calls that he never would have dreamed possible a few short years ago.The CFO of Excite At Home tells CFO.com that he’s been on the phone with his counterparts at several suppliers, discussing his company’s terms for business credit. The revelation follo...

By Joseph Radigan • July 31, 2001

The Cure for the Revenue Recognition Nightmare?

Michael Tidd, CFO of Callidus Software, a privately-held incentive- compensation management software vendor based in San Jose, Ca., is not the sort of person who shies away from technology. When his company was founded in 1998, he took on the challenge of building the back office from scratch.Sin...

By Jennifer Caplan • July 25, 2001

Penny Pinching PC Makers Lift Chip Companies

Both Intel and Advanced Micro Devices reported increased shipments of PC processors with their second quarter results, according to ZDNet./p>The price war between the two chipmakers has led computer manufacturers to stock up on parts now in anticipation of a rise in PC sales in the third quart...

By CFO Editorial Staff • July 24, 2001

How to Protect Copyrights on the Web

Last week, when a federal appeals court stayed the injunction that had shut down Napster’s music sharing Web site, the renegade music service was given something of a new lease of life. But as the online music service continues to meander its way through the court system, it may no longer occupy ...

By Joseph Radigan • July 24, 2001

MP3.com Will Supply Pressplay with Technology

Pressplay, the music subscription joint venture created by Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment, announced Thursday it will use MP3.com’s media delivery and subscription management. MP3.com is being acquired by Vivendi Universal.Pressplay is the two record labels’ answer to Napster,...

By CFO Editorial Staff • July 19, 2001

How Canadian National Cut $10 Million in Procurement Costs

Ordering spare locomotive parts and other supplies at the Canadian National Railway Co. once entailed poring over 75,000 items in catalogs that were “three times heavier than the Yellow Pages,” says Sameh Fahmy, the railroad’s vice president of supply management.But when Montreal based CN introdu...

By Gary M. Stern • July 18, 2001

Will Microsoft’s Concession Affect Corporate Customers?

Last week, in a widely publicized move that could affect the Justice Department’s landmark antitrust trial against Microsoft, the software giant announced that in Windows XP, the next version of its flagship operating system, hardware manufacturers will be permitted to delete the Internet Explore...

By Joseph Radigan • July 17, 2001

AOL Signs NFL Marketing Deal

The National Football League reached a multiyear marketing agreement with CBS, America Online, and SportsLine.com.No financial terms were released about the pact.SportsLine will produce and host the league’s NFL.com Web site, while the four partners explore other technology-based media opportunit...

By CFO Editorial Staff • July 11, 2001

How One CFO Cut His ERP Costs by 35 Percent

Not all CFO job descriptions include managing and overseeing a software overhaul. But that is just what Rick Tremblay, CFO of Gold Banc, a Leawood, Kan.-based commercial banking company, is doing.By September, Gold Banc will have finished the first stage of replacing its legacy financial applicat...

By Jennifer Caplan • July 11, 2001

Why SAP’s Cash Makes a Difference to Commerce One

Peter Pervere, Commerce One’s CFO, says the high-tech industry may have been doubting the strength of the relationship between the business-to-business marketplace provider and SAP. But the $225 million SAP spent to gain a 20 percent stake at the end of June should all but erase those doubts.The ...

By Joseph Radigan • July 10, 2001

Computer Associates Fires Back at Wyly

Computer Associates’ chairman Charles Wang and CEO Sanjay Kumar used the firm’s annual user conference, CA World, as a forum to blast Sam Wyly, the Texas-based shareholder who is trying to unseat management.Wyly’s challenge to Wang and Kumar burst on the scene in early June, when he accused the c...

By CFO Editorial Staff • July 9, 2001

Customer Caution Slams NCR’s Sales

Computer maker NCR says its Teradata data warehousing division is getting slammed by a trend among its current customers to delay plans for upgrading their systems.Customers with more than $60 million of data warehouse upgrades postponed their decision during the second quarter, many in the perio...

By CFO Editorial Staff • July 9, 2001

E-tailers Sell Data to Make up For Lost Revenue

Companies are using retail Web sites to test and monitor customers’ purchase patterns, gauge demand for products, and send that information back to the companies’ brick-and-mortar stores to make entire retail operations more efficient, according to a report Monday in The New York Times.E-tailers ...

By CFO Editorial Staff • July 9, 2001

How One CFO Made the Web His World

As any cost-conscious, tech-savvy CFO knows, it’s just not good business practice to let an enterprise resource planning system rest on its laurels. That’s why David Ferguson, CFO of PBD Worldwide Order Fulfillment Services, has pushed the envelope with the J.D. Edwards World ERP system that supp...

By Esther Shein • July 5, 2001

Will IBM’s Deals Mean More Web Services?

IBM was busy making hay in June, building on existing alliances with SAP and J.D. Edwards. For corporate users, the computer giant’s revamped product-development and marketing agreements promise to add to the Web-oriented features of the software companies’ enterprise resource planning systems.As...

By Joseph Radigan • July 3, 2001

Heads Up

Last May, 150,000 employees at the Ford Motor Co. waved goodbye to the Microsoft Windows interface that they had grown accustomed to seeing when they logged on to their computers every day. No, their IT department hadn’t succumbed to Apple Computer’s slick marketing campaigns and forsaken all the...

By Anthony Sibillin • July 1, 2001

Taking License

When technology firms promise to simplify your life, be careful. On October 1, new software licensing rules go into effect at Microsoft Corp., which touts the “simplified” program as a way to streamline the smorgasbord of licensing options currently available to most corporate customers.But many ...

By Tim Reason • July 1, 2001