Delivering the Goods

During the recent holiday season, Internet businesses hoped to avoid the ghost of Christmas past–the 1998 horror show in which E-tailers ran out of some products, couldn’t ship others in time, and offered ghastly customer service overall. Many online companies have since spent large sums toward i...

By John P. Mello Jr. • Jan. 1, 2000

The World Is Enough

Smallish Ratner Steel Co. used to have trouble getting noticed by the $700 billion global steel industry. The Minneapolis-based company, with $12 million in annual revenues, processes steel coil into sheets for sale to fabricators and welders.Because of its modest size, however, it was invisible ...

By Russ Banham • Jan. 1, 2000

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

Blaming ERP

Last July was a hot month in Pennsylvania, but the IT managers at Hershey Foods Corp. headquarters, in Hershey, Pennsylvania, were feeling a different kind of heat. For the past three years, they and four different teams of consultants had been working on a massive enterprise resource planning (E...

By Andrew Osterland • Jan. 1, 2000

Panning for Internet Gold

Data warehousing, a cluster of technologies that can deliver dazzling insights to decision makers and chronic headaches to IT staffers, has found a fertile new field of application: the World Wide Web. A small but growing number of companies are using “webhousing” to analyze the enormous volumes ...

By Edward Teach • Dec. 1, 1999

What to Buy Your Favorite Nerd

Another gift-giving season is upon us, and you know what that means: more agonizing over what to buy your favorite nerd. What are the latest “must-have” devices? The choices are endless. But here are a few of our favorite cameras, PDAs, computer games, and mobile phones for the most discriminatin...

By John Xenakis • Dec. 1, 1999

Internet Finance/Derivatives: A Financial Bazaar

Is nothing sacred? Now, even the complex financial engineering of the derivatives market is becoming the target of the ruthless competition of the Internet. A company called CFOWeb.com has launched a Web site with the aim of creating a virtual and efficient marketplace for such instruments as int...

By George Donnelly • Dec. 1, 1999

A Whiteboard for Budgets

The budgeting software arena is dominated by the likes of Hyperion, Comshare, and Adaytum, but there are a host of lesser-known contenders, such as A3 (“A cubed”) Solutions Inc. If you need lots of flexibility in modeling a business, A3’s Profit Center is worth a look.“It was pretty neat,” says M...

By John P. Mello Jr. • Nov. 1, 1999

Enter the Electronic Employee

Ever since 19th-century Luddites literally smashed the engines of the first industrial revolution in hopes of reversing progress, workers have had to compete for jobs with faster, cheaper, and more-productive technology. As the Luddites and subsequent critics have learned, technology usually prev...

By Kris Frieswick • Oct. 1, 1999

Setting Up Cybershop

Internet time, as we are all learning, moves a lot faster than ordinary time. It already seems ages since companies first began putting up Web sites, like so many billboards on the information superhighway. Not only have the billboards become more enticing–with their Java applets, their streaming...

By Edward Teach • Oct. 1, 1999

Sealing the Privacy

It’s no secret that many companies are staking their futures on E-commerce. But the dot-coms have one major hurdle to clear: consumer privacy.Many consumers still do not feel comfortable providing personal information or credit card numbers online. So businesses face a Catch 22; they can target c...

By Joseph McCafferty • Oct. 1, 1999

Deal Breaker

For Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Inc., it was the best of years, and it was the worst of years. In 1998, Newsweek rated the health maintenance organization the finest in the country, awarding it a string of “A’s” in various categories. Similar accolades came from U.S. News & World Report and a...

By Edward Teach • Aug. 1, 1999

CFO Buyer’s Guide: Ultralight Flying Machines

Like a growing number of companies, Edward D. Jones & Co. takes its E-mail policy seriously. In May, the St. Louis­ based brokerage firm fired 19 employees and disciplined another 41 for inappropriate Internet and E-mail use. Those who were fired ignored a memo instructing offenders to turn t...

By Enid Tsui • Aug. 1, 1999

The Check is On the Mail

Like a growing number of companies, Edward D. Jones & Co. takes its E-mail policy seriously. In May, the St. Louis­ based brokerage firm fired 19 employees and disciplined another 41 for inappropriate Internet and E-mail use. Those who were fired ignored a memo instructing offenders to turn t...

By Joseph McCafferty • Aug. 1, 1999

Accounting Via the Web

Outsourcing can lower costs, reduce personnel hassle, and now, through Web technology, provide 24-hour-a-day access. Galan Entertainment Inc., in Venice, Calif., has outsourced its accounting work to Licker & Ozurovich, of Los Angeles, for three years. But it recently joined the ranks of comp...

By David Raths • Aug. 1, 1999

The Phantom Menace of E-mail

One morning last fall, an employee of a large New England bank made the final keystroke of an E- mail message and clicked Send. Moments later, a box flashed on his PC screen: You have new mail. Startled, the employee opened the new message and saw the E-mail he had just sent–not only to its inten...

By Joseph McCafferty • June 1, 1999

Good Customer Relations: So Happy Together

Cheryl Currid, president and CEO of Houston-based consulting firm Currid & Co., is a very good airline customer. She spends at least $1,000 per flight on an average of 100 trips annually, and she always rides first-class. On the other hand, she’s a terrible credit-card customer. Since she pay...

By Bronwyn Fryer • June 1, 1999

Internet CFOs Have New Attitudes Towards E-Commerce

Joy Covey, CFO of Amazon.com Inc., isn’t one to stand still. Covey, who rode to her wedding on a snowmobile, decides to conduct the long-distance phone interview on the run. Rushing through Seattle traffic in pursuit of a double latte, she talks a mile a minute into her headset, drawing a few sta...

By George Donnelly • June 1, 1999

With The Internet, The Whole World Is Listening

Last January, top executives of C- Cube Microsystems Inc. conducted a conference call with about 60 people, mostly analysts and portfolio managers, to discuss the company’s performance for Q4 1998. Three months later, when the Milpitas, Calif., maker of digital video systems and chips announced i...

By Joseph McCafferty • June 1, 1999

The Perfect Web Hosting

For Triton Network Systems Inc., an ambitious, growing start-up in Orlando, installing a big-name enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is turning out to be a lot like having one’s cake and, yes, eating it too.Chartered in 1997 to make wireless data equipment for digital telecommunications, T...

By Jeffrey Zygmont • May 1, 1999

Linux Battles for the System

There’s nothing glamorous about a server operating system (OS), but no software is more critical to a company’s network and client/ server computer operations. A server OS is the platform on which applications reside, from A/P to ERP. It’s also a traffic cop, enabling multiple PCs to use applicat...

By Brian O'Connell • April 1, 1999

Coping With Infoglut

If it isn’t announced by a ring, beep, or flash, it’s delivered to your front desk by a person in a uniform; or spit out by a machine that looks like a printer, but takes phone calls; or transmitted to your PC, heralded perhaps by a little toot of arrival or even (if the IT manager has a bad sens...

By Joseph McCafferty • Sept. 1, 1998

More Power to Them

The engineers at Intel Corp., it seems, have gotten a whole lot better at making molehills out of mountains. And as usual when such miracles occur in the world of notebook computers, the beneficiaries are the folks who use the amazing little machines.Over the past few months, practically every ma...

By John Goff • Aug. 1, 1998

Network Monitoring Software

Every Move You MakeA software program that enables companies to monitor employees’ computer activities can reduce support costs and raise productivity. But it also raises the hackles of computer privacy advocates.Unlike other network monitoring software that only tracks which Web sites employees ...

By John Xenakis • June 1, 1998

Information, Please

Bridge Information Systems Inc. recently acquired Dow Jones Markets from Dow Jones & Co., following its 1995 acquisition of Knight- Ridder Financial. The buy places Bridge (www.bridge.com) in second place among the three leading online financial information vendors, behind Reuters Group Plc (...

By John Xenakis • May 1, 1998

Multidimensional Database

Atlantic Container Line AB used to keep its budget in a spreadsheet. “It was designed by one person who was intimately familiar with it,” says Robert Moore, vice president of business control for the Swedish steamship line, with American headquarters in South Plainfield, N.J. “But it required one...

By John Xenakis • April 1, 1998