Best Practices in Operational BI CFO Project Volume 3, July 31, 2007
Converging Analytical and Operational Processes
Wayne W. Eckerson, TDWI, Sponsored by InetSoft

 A Quarter Century of Proven Results CFO Project Volume 3, July 31, 2007
For 25 years, Teksouth has delivered successful business intelligence solutions to the Department of Defense. It now delivers similar proven performance to mid- and large-sized enterprises.

 Case Study: Teksouth Corporation CFO Project Volume 3, July 31, 2007
A Financial Management Project That Didn't 'Soar Into the Wild Blue Yonder'

 Enhance Performance Via Operational Business Intelligence: Collaboration, Exploration and Integration CFO Project Volume 3, July 31, 2007
InetSoft Operational BI allows multiple business professionals across the enterprise to access and collaborate on information, when and how they need it.

 Improving the Effectiveness of Finance CFO Project Volume 3, July 31, 2007
Information-technology-led performance management can enhance the strategic value of finance departments.
Robert Kugel, Ventana Research

 Public Sector CFO Transformation for Performance and Accountability CFO Project Volume 3, July 31, 2007
CFOs working in government need to become true strategic partners to their nonfinance colleagues to achieve agency goals.
Gary Land, BearingPoint, Tom Gunning, BearingPoint, Thomas Dale, BearingPoint, Jean Bennett, BearingPoint

 Turning IT Services Change From a Minefield to a Gold Mine CFO Project Volume 3, July 31, 2007
Knowledge is power for CFOs weighing the risks and rewards of high-impact IT services deals.
Alex Veytsel, RampRate

  Driving Information Management for Ultimate Business Value CFO Project Volume 2, October 01, 2003
January 6, 2004 - Facilitating timely information in the right context for users is the largest challenge companies trying to improve overall business performance face. At the core of this challenge is having an information management architecture that can adapt and deliver on the needs of business today and in the future. While seemingly simple in concept, this is one of the CIO's biggest concerns today.
Mark Smith, Ventana Research

 ADP CANADA: Cognos Allows Us to Look at Things in Different Ways and Find Real Opportunities CFO Project Volume 2, October 01, 2003
ADP Canada is a “business behind the business.” The largest Canadian provider of HR and payroll information solutions, ADP Canada needed to manage the complexities of a steadily expanding client roster aswell as the intricacies of its own corporate planning, budgeting, and forecasting processes. Opportunities for cost savings were going unrecognized, the planning cycle was tedious, and data accuracy needed a boost—until the company implemented a Cognos Enterprise Planning solution.
Jeff Gerkin, Cognos

 BI and Enterprise Performance CFO Project Volume 2, October 01, 2003
Information elitism is over. CFOs are expected to democratize access to data. But how can this goal be accomplished without losing control?
Bob Gressens, SAS

 Building World-Class Finance and Performance Management Capabilities
CFO Project Volume 2, October 01, 2003
Success in creating both business analytics and performance management capabilities requires finance executives to move beyond the boundaries of their organizations to influence the systems, decisions, and actions across the enterprise. To make the job even more challenging, the range of tools and techniques to collect, organize, understand, and communicate information regarding industry, competitive position, enterprise performance, and specific initiatives presents a continually changing landscape.
Michael R. Sutcliff, Accenture

 Business Intelligence: Solving the ERP Overload CFO Project Volume 2, October 01, 2003
Organizations realize there is a wealth of information in ERP data, but the difficulty is finding and leveraging it. To truly maximize return on investment, a business intelligence solution on top of an ERP system is required. Business intelligence is a broad category of applications, including technologies for reporting, analysis, and sharing of information that helps users make better business decisions.

 Delivering Profitability Through Basel II Compliance CFO Project Volume 2, October 01, 2003
Basel II has triggered an upgrade in risk management infrastructure for many banks. These organizations have gained benefits through the evolution of best practices, risk management processes, and scorecard deployment.
Martin O''Connor, Scorex

 Deluxe Corporation Manages World-Class Performance with Cognos Enterprise Planning CFO Project Volume 2, October 01, 2003
Deluxe’s three business units provide personal and business checks, business forms, labels, self-inking stamps, fraud prevention services, and customer retention programs to banks, credit unions, financial services companies, consumers, and small businesses through multiple distribution channels such as the Internet, direct mail, telephone, and a nationwide sales force. The company’s plans to aggressively pursue new market opportunities have resulted in increasingly stringent business planning requirements. Armed with Cognos Enterprise Planning, Deluxe has created and implemented sophisticated business planning processes that deliver increased speed and accuracy to its enterprise-wide analysis and forecasting processes.
Jeff Gerkin, Cognos

 Driving the Enterprise CFO Project Volume 2, October 01, 2003
Enterprise performance management connects top-line goals wth day-to-day activities, transforming a mountain of data from an enemy into an ally.
Patrick Morrissey, Business Objects

 Keeping An Eye on Expansion: How Cartesis is Helping Sartorius Increase the Speed Flexibility and Accuracy of its Financial Reporting CFO Project Volume 2, October 01, 2003
Rapid growth can be a mixed blessing. While the increase in revenues, scope and geographic reach are all positive steps, profitability, morale and efficiency are often victims of corporate success. This is all too evident in acquisitive enterprises which look to build on organic growth by bringing in complementary organizations or offerings from outside. For M&A activity to work, integration and consistency are crucial. If an organization functions as a number of separate, stand-alone entities, then differences can be inefficient at best, crippling at worst.

 Longview Solutions’ Dialog 2003 Round Table CFO Project Volume 2, October 01, 2003
CFOs: Strategists or Stewards? 10 Ways To Be Both The double-edged responsibility of any organization’s finance function is not new. Financial officers have been responsible for recording the past since well before Fra Luca Pacioli first codified double entry accounting in Renaissance Venice. They have also, in more modern times, played a growing role in guiding the future of their organizations, weighing risk and opportunity against the cold, hard reality of the numbers.
Longview Roundtable, Longview Solutions

 Microsoft Posts BI Tools for Microsoft Office CFO Project Volume 2, October 01, 2003
July 28, 2004 - Microsoft released two new business intelligence (BI) add-ins for Microsoft Office: The Microsoft Office Excel Add-in for SQL Server Analysis Services and the Microsoft Office Business Scorecards Accelerator. The former enables Excel-based analysis of data stored in Analysis Services cubes, the latter provides capabilities in Microsoft SharePoint Portal (& Services) to create and manage business performance management scorecards. Ventana Research believes that BI should be on every desktop to improve the performance management capability of everyone in the organization. Ventana Research finds these add-ons as interesting but not yet comparable to other enterprise architected and validated solutions.
Stewart McKie, Ventana Research

 Sarbanes-Oxley and BPM: Selecting Software That Will Enhance Compliance CFO Project Volume 2, October 01, 2003
Since the Sarbanes-Oxley Act became law in 2002, companies have been scrambling to update their financial reporting processes. Forward-looking businesses have turned to BPM systems to facilitate ongoing compliance.
Alan D. Ginsberg, Cartesis, Inc.

 The Compliance Consortium Launches CFO Project Volume 2, October 01, 2003
July 28, 2004 - Ventana Research welcomes any initiative that will bring more clarity to the appliance of compliance. The newly launched Compliance Consortium is a step in this direction. But it needs more heavyweight members to sign-up before we can take it, and yet another three-letter acronym (GRC), seriously.
Stewart McKie, Ventana Research

 The Consumer Revolution over Privacy Protection CFO Project Volume 2, October 01, 2003
Ventana Research urges technology vendors in the CRM, customer intelligence, and customer analytics niches to outline development strategies for their customers and aggressively articulate assumptions about the privacy framework that customer-facing organizations are expected to have in place.
Jack Hafeli, Ventana Research

 The Future of Customer Services: The Road to Top-Line Impact CFO Project Volume 2, October 01, 2003
Customer service organizations (CSOs) are under pressure. Resource constraints dictate that CSOs support more customers and more products with less manpower. At the same time, customer expectations are being driven higher by companies whose customer service processes and technologies are relatively advanced.
Greg Gianforte, RightNow

 The New CFO: Risk, Reward and The Story Behind the Numbers CFO Project Volume 2, October 01, 2003
Streamlining the Financial Business Performance Process in Today’s Multinational Corporation
Trevor Walker, Cartesis, Inc., David Kasabian, Cartesis, Inc.

 Visualization Uncovers Revenue Opportunities and Cost Savings for Enterprise Storage Vendor CFO Project Volume 2, October 01, 2003
Antarctica recently completed a pilot project with one of the global leaders in the enterprise storage space, who provide customers worldwide with a broad range of hardware and software storage solutions. With an increasing number of players in the space, and hardware becoming more ubiquitous, the price per megabyte of storage is decreasing. The company was in need of new revenue streams to maintain their competitive leadership role.

 When Good Spreadsheets Go Bad CFO Project Volume 2, October 01, 2003
July 28, 2004 - The electronic spreadsheet was the ‘killer application’ driving adoption of the personal computer. It revolutionized how finance people do their day-to-day work, improving their efficiency and expanding the scope of analysis and calculation they can perform. However, the standalone spreadsheet running on a personal computer has numerous deficiencies that make it unsuitable for use in a collaborative, enterprise environment.
Robert Kugel, Ventana Research

 Building World-Class Finance and Performance Management Capabilities CFO Project Volume 1, October 01, 2002
The current economic environment creates new challenges for finance executives. Constant pressures to excel in operating a low cost finance organization while targeting new value creation opportunities and acting as business advisors, sets the bar high for expected performance. A combination of trends may make the future economic environment even more demanding.
Michael R. Sutcliff, Accenture

 CFO Project Volume 1 Preface CFO Project Volume 1, October 01, 2002
Welcome to the first volume of ideas, points of view, vendor profiles, and company case studies from the CFO Project with Montgomery Research. Competitive Financial Operations is designed to provide insights for finance executives interested in creating transaction processing and performance reporting solutions that are efficient and effective on a global scale.
Michael R. Sutcliff, Accenture

 Harmonizing ERP Architectures to Create New Value CFO Project Volume 1, October 01, 2002
As companies’ activities become more integrated, the need for global capabilities increases as does the need for consolidated, real-time information. Harmonization is a way to leverage existing synergies between disparate enterprise architectures while creating business value. It is not, however, a synonym for a single worldwide ERP platform.
Daniel Lipson, Accenture, Eric M. Gautheir, Accenture

 Improving Performance – Technology Steps Up Budgeting and Financial Planning Software CFO Project Volume 1, October 01, 2002
Time-consuming methods of sharing and aggregating information bog down budgeting and financial planning processes. The concepts of rolling budgets and dynamic, cross-functional financial planning are catching on as companies adopt more powerful software tools. Ultimately, technology will enable companies to execute real-time planning and performance management processes through a more collaborative approach.
Paul Hamerman, Forrester Research

 Maximizing the ERP Investment CFO Project Volume 1, October 01, 2002
Throughout the ‘90s, most large businesses moved from legacy systems to comprehensive ERP systems purchased from vendors like Oracle, PeopleSoft, and SAP, in an effort to standardize back-office processes and reduce the costs. With the use of more and better-organized transactional data, decision-makers would be better able to guide a company’s success.
Larry Scheurich, DecisionPoint Applications

 Outsourcing Mission-Critical Communications to Improve Customer Relationships CFO Project Volume 1, October 01, 2002
Outsourcing communications applications helps enhance relationships between company and customer while relieving companies of significant management challenges. Benefits include improved customer retention and relationships, focus on core competencies, enhanced technological resources, and reduction in both operational costs and capital investment.
Ms. Kim Herren, DST Output

 Q&A with Adaytum CEO Guy Haddleton (Adaytum was recently acquired by Cognos) CFO Project Volume 1, October 01, 2002
CFO Project editors spoke with Adaytum CEO Guy Haddleton about the eye-catching success of his company, its role in the future of enterprise performance planning, and how companies can benefit from EPP solutions.

 Record to Report: Accelerating the Close Cycle CFO Project Volume 1, October 01, 2002
The financial and accounting close is marred by inefficiencies and delays with the average organization taking 12 days to close the books. Many companies have an interest in not only shortening the close process, but improving the quality of the data and dedicating additional time to analysis and forecasting.
Thomas V. Hallett, Accenture

 The Automation of Travel and Entertainment Management CFO Project Volume 1, October 01, 2002
More than $370 billion is spent annually on T&E expenses, a sector that continues to grow. The volume of T&E reports mandates streamlined, automated processes. Many companies now use ad hoc systems that result in inconsistencies and encourage fraud. Solution providers offer various software packages and Web-enabled solutions that deliver bottom-line benefits.
Thomas V. Hallett, Accenture

 The New Business Imperative: Using the Internet to Boost Your Bottom Line CFO Project Volume 1, October 01, 2002
As companies struggle to stay afloat, cost savings have soared to the top of the corporate agenda. Yet, the environment for fresh investments in Internet technology remains. Executives have come to see the Internet as a vital tool to drive operational efficiency. Even where margins face extreme pressure, a determined push into e-business continues.

 The Virtual Close – Myth or Reality? CFO Project Volume 1, October 01, 2002
Efficient financial reporting is key to comprehensive business performance management. Typically the financial consolidation and reporting cycles consume 12 business days. World-class companies have adopted a virtual close, completing the entire closing and reporting cycle within a few hours. This state-of-the-art process provides real-time insights for management.
John O''Rourke, Hyperion