The benefits of cloud computing—a high return on investment, greater staff efficiencies, optimization of IT resources, and enhanced visibility and access to information— have piqued the interest of CFOs and finance leaders who are actively evaluating the risks versus the rewards of the cloud delivery model. Although a steady migration to the cloud is happening…
Over lunch, Jacob and Marilyn discussed some of the frustrations they were experiencing on one of their current projects. Jacob was a business analyst on the project and Marilyn was the subject matter expert. Jacob turned to Marilyn and said to her, “If you could say just one thing to Tom our project manager, what would it be?” Without hesitation Marilyn replied, “Please, make a decision.”
Many organizations are confused as to the difference between BI and Performance Management and how the two fit together. This is made worse as Performance Management has become synonymous with planning, budgeting and forecasting systems, while BI is seen as systems that provide detailed analyses. Gartner introduced the term Corporate Performance Management (CPM), which they defined as “… the processes, methodologies, metrics and systems used to monitor and manage an enterprise’s business performance”. The promise of CPM was to improve decision-making and provide more effective control over organizational activity.
What improvement programs are Finance organizations embarking on today? What level of commitment are they making, and in what areas? These are some of the questions APQC and IEG researched in a compelling new whitepaper.
145 organizations participated in the survey and some of the findings are quite surprising.
The fact that eight out of ten organizations are now pursuing major process improvements is significant for three reasons. First, prior to the global financial crisis, CFOs by and large were mainly interested in incremental process improvements to save money. The slogan “do more with less” summed up the general attitude. But now we have strong evidence that CFOs want to deliver effectiveness as well as efficiency. The overwhelming majority of survey respondents indicated they are now pursuing these goals simultaneously.
Power is coveted, sought, and tightly held onto. From the animal kingdom to all human societies, power is the currency of success.
Those in power are less likely to reciprocate because they tend to believe that the favors they have received were selfishly motivated.
The Galactic Empire [is] a quintessential example of how not to effectively run an organization. Let’s take a look at five of the Empire’s biggest mistakes and see how you can avoid them in your own organization.
Captain James T. Kirk is one of the most famous Captains in the history of Starfleet. There’s a good reason for that. He saved the planet Earth several times, stopped the Doomsday Machine, helped negotiate peace with the Klingon Empire, kept the balance of power between the Federation and the Romulan Empire, and even managed to fight Nazis.
of a project handover gone wrong. Ifyou work in a big ticket software, technical support organization then you and your team members have likely been the victim of a customer project handover gone wrong. This is not as serious as other crimes, but addressing a red, project handover is of critical importance.
Hiring salespeople is like major surgery – it is best to get a second opinion before going under the knife. You wouldn’t trust someone with your life on an operating table without doing your due diligence; nor should you trust someone with your business without sending them through a rigorous interview process.
This series of articles is intended to help organizations of all sizes achieve the best results possible from their performance management initiatives. In each article, the goal is to provide at least one simple step that can increase the odds of a successful outcome. This month we look at the list of vendors to be…