Mixed Signals for Wireless

MIXED SIGNALS FOR WIRELESS Predictions of a wireless world may be slightly premature, affording companies some breathing room.Earnings disappointments and layoffs at major wireless-device makers constitute just some of the bad news emanating from a technology sector widely viewed as the next big ...

By CFO Editorial Staff • June 1, 2001

Budget Tracking

Software developers are stepping into the ongoing budget battle between marketing and finance departments with a new budgeting tool. “Today, all of our clients are held accountable for their marketing spend, and they are always focused on ROI,” says Jim Graham, co-founder of KickFire Inc., a Sara...

By Tama Miyake • June 1, 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

Competitive Intelligence and Cyber-Pricing

Just how much is that widget worth? Why not put it up on eBay and find out?A growing number of major corporations are doing just that: using eBay and various business-to-business online marketplaces as combination sales and intelligence-gathering tools. Sun Microsystems Inc., for example, has bee...

By John Edwards • June 1, 2001

Conversation Pieces

For years, a technology known as VOIP (voice over Internet protocol) has served as an esoteric incarnation of ham radio, allowing its tech- savvy practitioners (read: geeks) to make free but faltering long- distance calls through desktop computers.Now VOIP is going mainstream, and some say it wil...

By Tim Reason • June 1, 2001

Software That Gives the Big Picture

Sometimes you need a piece of software that gives you the big picture, and Empresas Polar, which has been feeding 600 different food and beverage lines to the people of Columbia and Venezuela for the past 60 years, has been eager to get its financial planning into focus.For a company with such a ...

By Jackie Cohen • May 30, 2001

Can Covisint Shift into Gear?

Covisint, the online auto parts B2B exchange created by Detroit’s Big Three automakers, recently put the finishing touches on two related technology sourcing deals.Earlier this month, in separate announcements, Sun Microsystems and Exodus Communications said the E-marketplace will host its applic...

By Joseph Radigan • May 29, 2001

How This CFO Rebuilt His Firm From the Ground Up

Raghavan Rajaji has been on something of a roller coaster ride since arriving at supply chain management-software provider Manugistics early last year.In early 1999, the Rockville, Md.-based company had just survived a near death experience. In the fiscal year ended February 1999, losses skyrocke...

By Jennifer Caplan • May 29, 2001

Making Sense of Microsoft’s New Software Licenses

Microsoft is handing corporate America an ultimatum.The software giant has effectively said, “Get your software current by October 1, or pay a steep price when you finally do decide to move to the latest version of Windows or Office.”The licensing changes have left CFOs trying to determine how to...

By Jennifer Caplan • May 25, 2001

Taking the Pain out of the Budgeting Exercise

Budgeting and planning used to be merely a once-a-year exercise. For most companies, that was a good thing, considering how painful a task it was.But with the incorporation of the Web into the current generation of budgeting programs, that once-a-year task is being extended into a year- round pro...

By Theresa W. Carey • May 23, 2001

In the Eye of the Storm

Marshall Witt would agree with the argument that business in Silicon Valley can be both a blessing and a curse, but with a slightly different take. Witt is CFO of Viking Freight, a San Jose, Calif.-based division of FedEx Corp. that has 140 employees in its tech department, five of whom support W...

By Joseph Radigan • May 22, 2001

E-commerce Tax Bill is Bottled up in McCain’s Panel

The interminable rivalry between President George Bush and Sen. John McCain seems to be getting played out in an unlikely arena—the debate over the pending extension of the moratorium on E-commerce taxes.The Senate version of the legislation has been bottled up in McCain’s Commerce Committee, whi...

By Joseph Radigan • May 18, 2001

How XML Brings Old Content Back to Life

(Editor’s Note: This is the third of a three-part series about content management in E-commerce and corporate Web strategies. Today’s story focuses on one company’s use of XML, an important emerging technology in the transfer of information on the Internet. The first article in the series focused...

By John Xenakis • May 16, 2001

Why This B2B Software CFO Told His VCs to Get Real

B2eMarkets is something of an anomaly. The Rockville, Md.-based company recently raised $38 million in venture capital money in a market that’s been so dry that a half-empty funding glass would be a good sign.Yet for Ronald Holtz, the CFO for the maker of B2B supply chain software, the recent com...

By Joseph Radigan • May 15, 2001

Why XML Is A-OK for B2B

The recent approval of XML schemas by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) could prove to be an important step in improving automated B2B transactions.Like HTML, XML is a programming language that dates back to the Web’s early days. Unlike HTML, which only addresses the manner in which data is dis...

By Jennifer Caplan • May 10, 2001

London Lawyers’ Web-based Paper Chase

(Editor’s Note: This is the second of three stories about content management in E-commerce and Web design. Today’s story focuses on how a London-based law firm is using the Web to distribute documents to more than a dozen offices on four continents.Click here to read Tuesday’s story about Best Bu...

By Joseph Radigan • May 9, 2001

Best Buy is a Clicks-and-Mortar Believer

(Editor’s Note: This is the first of three articles about content management in E-commerce and Web design. Today’s story will focus on how one major retailer’s redesign of its site fits its marketing strategy and how the site’s design is used to complement the promotional campaign in its stores. ...

By Joseph Radigan • May 8, 2001

IT Services Spending Predicted to Double by 2005

IT spending is alive and still expected to grow well. Despite the spate of high-profile revenue and earnings warnings from the blue chip tech set, led by Cisco Systems, a survey recently released by Gartner Dataquest paints a rosy picture of the future of the global IT services market.The worldwi...

By Jennifer Caplan • May 3, 2001

Web Services: The Great Buildup

A grand new vision of the Internet is emerging, at least among software firms eager to sell the building blocks that would make it possible. While dubbed “Web services,” this vision is really about software infrastructure, or the lack thereof. In the Web-services model, companies won’t buy softwa...

By Scott Leibs • May 1, 2001

E-mail Encryption Remains a Secret

Phil Zimmermann, the man who successfully battled the federal government over the issue of E-mail privacy, now faces a more formidable foe: corporate indifference. Zimmermann invented PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), an encryption program that is virtually uncrackable. The State Department spent three ...

By Scott Leibs • May 1, 2001

Lands’ End Likes its Customers Where it Finds Them

Don Hughes says he’s a “channel agnostic.” At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter to Hughes, the CFO for catalog merchant Lands’ End’s, whether a customer makes her or his purchase through the company’s Web site, via mail-order, or on the toll free phone line.Clearly, Hughes likes the Web’s pot...

By Joseph Radigan • May 1, 2001

Web Services: The Great Buildup

A grand new vision of the Internet is emerging, at least among software firms eager to sell the building blocks that would make it possible. While dubbed “Web services,” this vision is really about software infrastructure, or the lack thereof. In the Web-services model, companies won’t buy softwa...

By Scott Leibs • May 1, 2001

How to Keep Your Software from Getting Snarled in Traffic

(Editor’sNote: E-commerce Strategies is a new weekly column that aims to help finance executives evaluate the latest developments in E- commerce.)If a grocer in downtown Boston is awaiting the delivery of a truckload of frozen vegetables from Iowa, what can the grocer do if the truck suddenly get...

By Jennifer Caplan • April 24, 2001

Budget Software that Turns on a Dime

With the number of enterprise budgeting packages growing, it’s not surprising that some are targeting specialized areas.For example, a package from ClosedLoop Solutions Inc. (www.closedloopsolutions.com) targets so-called high-velocity companies— or firms whose business plans change so quickly th...

By John Xenakis • April 18, 2001

Who Will Be the Bankers for B2B?

CFOs and other financial executives at firms that participate in E- marketplace supply chains might find themselves dealing far less with familiar bank officers.More and more, they might find themselves doing business with brokers and intermediaries who operate solely in cyberspace.Those observat...

By Joseph Radigan • April 17, 2001

How Two Fund Distributors Are Using B2C

Two years ago, it was hip to say that the New Economy reigned supreme, but ever since the tech market soured, it’s become even trendier to say that retail E-commerce was never more than a pipe dream.But before you endorse either of these extreme points of view, maybe you should talk to Gerry Sull...

By Joseph Radigan • April 17, 2001