Which CFO Type Are You?

What kind of CFO are you? Are you a magician or a multi-linguist? An ethics officer or athlete? Or all of the above?

Ten Questions To Develop Your Mobile Business Intelligence Strategy

In my post “Mobile BI” Doesn’t Mean “Mobile-Enabled Reports” I articulated the importance of developing a mobile business intelligence (BI) strategy. If designed, implemented, and executed effectively, mobile BI will not only complement the existing business intelligence framework, but it will enable organizations to drive growth and profitability.

For the next ten weeks, I want to chart a course that will highlight the key questions you need to ask before embarking on a mobile BI journey. This is the critical first step in validating mobile BI readiness for any organization, whether it’s a Fortune 500 company, a small-to-medium enterprise, or a small team within a large enterprise.

A Modeled Approach to Marketing’s Contribution

As we provide benchmark studies for SiriusDecisions clients, we often see organizations struggle to measure marketing’s contribution to, and influence on, sales pipeline. As a first step toward capturing these key performance indicators, we walk clients through a model that breaks down typical marketing contribution and mix based on three go-to-market strategies: direct enterprise accounts, inside commercial accounts, and small-and-medium-sized business (SMB)/channel accounts.

Essential Budgeting and Planning System Components: Part 1 – Workflow

An efficient budgeting, planning and forecasting process is a cornerstone of successful organizations. Software goes a long way in driving that efficiency – and I’m not talking about Excel. If you’re outgrowing spreadsheet-based planning and will be evaluating dedicated planning solutions to facilitate more accurate, timely and agile planning, over the next few articles, I’ll be laying out the system components, or specific features, you’ll want to look for. You can see these components demonstrated in my recent webinar on Budgeting and Planning in 2013, but here I’ll write about them in more detail and explain why they’re important to the success of your planning initiative.

Three Strategies To Get Started With Mobile Business Intelligence

A “mobile-only” strategy reflects a strong commitment, or all-in approach, by the management team to mobile BI, or mobility in general. This may be due to a specific reason, such as the relevance of mobility in a particular industry or the opportunity to create a strategic advantage in a highly competitive market. Or a company may decide that mobility needs to be a vital part of their vision.

However, in order for this strategy to be successful, it requires a commitment that results in both championing the cause at the board or senior management level and making the necessary resources available for execution at the tactical level.

In reality, this approach doesn’t necessarily translate into creating a mobile version of every analysis or shutting down all production lines for PC-based outlets for reporting and analytics. Instead, it reflects a strong emphasis on establishing scalable mobile consumption paths for analytics, and it signals a willingness to exploit a mobile-first mindset.

Analytics – from the World of Finance to the HR Organization

In the finance and banking industries, organizations have employed for years mathematicians, statisticians, engineers, physicists, and highly-skilled specialists with super-strong analytical skills. They put these skills to work, sifting through volumes of financial, economic, and social data to identify trends, pick out the “needles in the haystack,” and determine the probability of markets going up or down. Their brain power, combined with machine resources, is focused keenly on exploring and acting on new ideas to increase the return on investments, whether through gaining a sub-second advantage in trading or in long-term ventures.

However, the idea of tapping big data in the context of the workforce, in order to gain a competitive edge, is just beginning to sink in with many HR organizations.

Shoddy or Integrity?

Ancient Romans used integritas to describe pottery. Saying a ceramic piece had integritas meant the quality that appeared on the outside existed throughout the entire piece. There were no hidden weaknesses or imperfections covered by an attractive glaze. A vessel with integritas will hold up under stress.

Why ‘Pay For Performance’ Is a Sham

When Peter Drucker published his first major book, The End of Economic Man, in 1939, the median compensation for chief executives of the biggest companies in America stood at about $1 million a year (in today’s dollars).

The median pay was still at roughly $1 million, in inflation-adjusted terms, when Drucker’s 1954 landmark, The Practice of Management, came out. Executive compensation was at the same level when his Managing for Resultsappeared in 1964. Ditto when Drucker’s Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices was released in 1973.

Then things exploded.