There used to be saying in business that the customer is always right and anything or everything should be done to make the customer happy, even if it includes throwing someone under a bus. On the other hand, some professionals in sales and service would contend that keeping the company mission in mind and fairly representing the company side of things is a better way even if the customer goes away mad.
There are many benefits included in the “value proposition” for cloud computing models, but there are some hidden gems in terms of how these outsourced IT models can specifically and directly address one of the biggest problems facing many smaller nonprofit organizations: they have to use old, outdated, and often just pretty crummy equipment. But now it’s OK, because even crummy old PCs can work just fine when the applications are hosted in the cloud.
Are accountants being unethical or just irresponsible when they misallocate costs to products, service-lines, channels, and customers? Are they not adequately serving the needs of their managers and workforce when they report flawed and misleading information needed for insights and better decision making? Should we place shame on them or shame them? There is a difference.
There is a tight connection between Oscar winners and project teams implementing analytics-based enterprise performance management (EPM) methodologies, such as customer profitability analysis, driver-based rolling financial forecasts, strategic scorecards, and operational dashboards. Each method is imbedded with business analytics of all flavors, such as regression and correlation analysis. Project teams also enjoy success seeing these types of solutions go live and being leveraged for employees to gain insight and foresight, make better decisions, and align work activities and priorities with the executive team’s strategy.
Here are few examples of the 2014 Academy Award best movie nominees with these connections to EPM:
Usually I am fairly rational
and do not let my personal emotions interfere with how I interact with others. However, as the readers of my blogs and articles may have detected, my more recent writings increasingly reflect my frustrations with old school accountants. I cannot disguise my irritation and annoyance with accountants who refuse to be progressive.
The more information we collect and share, the smarter we become. The same applies to today’s smart technology. How will technology continue to evolve government accounting systems in the next 20 years?
Business owners and managers need to keep close control of their financial data. They need to know where they stand at all times, and having information available to make business decisions is essential. When the financial information is in the office but the owner isn’t, how can wise decisions be made without access to supporting…
There has always been somewhat of a struggle between the IT department and “management”, much of the difficulty existing with the need to demonstrate clear returns on investments for IT purchases. Unfortunately, expenditures in information technology are often the result of short-term views of long-standing problems, applying “solutions” that do not fully address the requirement or which do not deliver the productivity or performance gains expected, particularly in a dynamic and rapidly changing business environment. The assumption is that a wise investment in information technology will result with improved profitability and performance. [But} demonstrating this on paper is not always easily accomplished.
CEB’s Finance Pathfinder Research of 2200 finance staff at over 75 global organizations found that Finance is increasingly required to take a guidance-based role in supporting business decisions and facilitating business partnership. Forces such as geographic dispersion, matrixed structures, and information technology proliferation coupled with increasing demands from the business are driving this change. Most finance departments…
