Is it Cloud or is it Desktop?

The information technology industry has seen a lot of disruption in recent years, with complexity and risk in systems rising as users demand more functional mobile capability and software developers struggle to protect and preserve their assets (users included). Skyline (by Uni-Data) is jumping right into the middle of it with Numecent, delivering solutions for software developers and cloud providers alike, and answering the question of whether it’s cloud or desktop. The answer is “yes”.

Why Does Size Matter When It Comes To Financial Accounting Technology?

Determining what kind of financial accounting technology solution a business needs is often a matter of asking one simple question: How big is the company?

Different-size organizations have different needs. Small companies, where the owner is master chef and chief dishwasher, typically need a system that allows them to do more cooking and less washing. Medium-size organizations need a system where financial applications are integrated with operational applications and the controls that come with that. Meanwhile, large enterprises need a full scope enterprise resource management system that enables data to remain consistent between departments.

The Line in the Sand: Your RPO (Recovery Point Objective)

Businesses and individuals are increasingly more dependent upon the technology supporting their various activities, and the volume and velocity of information moving through these systems is increasing at astonishing rates. With the growing reliance on information technology and electronic business data, you’d think that more businesses were paying close attention to protecting these assets. I recognize that there is a broad understanding of responsibilities as they pertain to system security, and businesses of all sizes and types are increasing their awareness of the variety of threats facing their systems and are taking steps to address them. Yet there remains an aspect of business data protection that too few businesses are really zeroing in on, and that is the time and complexity of recovering or restoring business data in the event of an outage or loss – and the absolute line drawn in the sand which says that “here” is the tolerable loss we can experience: no more and no less.

This line in the sand is referred to as the RPO, or Recovery Point Objective.

Seven Essential Qualities of FP&A

Financial planning and analysis (FP&A) teams are responsible for testing the viability of big ideas coming out of the C-suite. These professionals are being asked to understand key business drivers and perform predictive analysis. To enable innovation and smart decisions, they must focus on modeling and predicting options for resource allocation, growth investments, and risk management. Advanced financial analysts are already building, testing, and perfecting collaboration tools that enable scenario planning and what-if analysis that focus on forward-looking choices. So, what does it take to excel as an FP&A professional?

Should CFOs Oversee Big Data And Accounting Analytics?

Corporate leaders are beginning to face the facts: The key to marketing and innovation is successfully harnessing the power of digital information.

Over the last few years, harnessing the power of information has presented itself as Big Data and accounting analytics. Big Data describes data sets that are so large and complex that traditional data management systems have difficulty processing them.

But one question remains…

How Can Advanced Financial Management Systems Make You A More Strategic CFO?

For decades, financial managers have pieced together and manipulated spreadsheets in order to report on past data and maintain the financial integrity of their businesses. Sure, if they had time, they could use these primitive tools to attempt to identify trends and offer insights. But this effort was ridden with information silos, dirty data and…

What Words Tell Us about Analytics and Performance Management

What trends have developed over the past century for enterprise and corporate performance management methods and business analytics?

One way to find an answer is if we performed research using a Google database that was unveiled in 2011. It includes 5.2 million books published between 1500 and 2008. With this database, one can input search words and phrases and discover how frequently those different terms were used during different past time periods.

With this Google database, researchers have been learning about interesting and possibly relevant shifts in social values or cultures. For example, one study revealed that between 1960 and 2008 self-centered phrases about an individual increased while group-related communal phrases declined. That is, phrases like “I come first” increased as “community” and “common good” decreased.

Some Accountants are the Blind Leading the Blind

I recently met a managerial consultant whose intentions were sincere, however his advice was surprising, but not totally surprising, to me. He mentioned to me that a company had inquired to him whether they should consider using activity-based costing (ABC). His next step was initially encouraging. He contacted the accounting departments of the inquiring company’s…

Communicating with Numbers: The Most Critical Skill for Finance Pros?

Assuming we gather, interpret, and understand financial information, the manner in which we communicate this information will impact how we are perceived within our organizations, and the extent to which executives and operational leaders will take action based on your work.