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.

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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?

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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…

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Bigger Data? Or Better Models? Or…?

If you work in the analytics world, you’ve probably either read or at least heard of the seminal book “Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work and Think,” published earlier this year. Authors Viktor Mayer-Schonberger and Kenneth Cukier’s provocative point of departure is that the new data norm of N=all and a tolerance…

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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…

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SWOT

The SWOT analysis is one of the more useful of management tools when aggressively pursued. But too often it turns into an inauthentic exercise done merely for its own sake, completed by teams that go through the motions instead of taking its strategic implications seriously. We have all likely participated in dozens if not hundreds of SWOTs, some for our own departments and others in review of various enterprise-wide business functions and product lines, and we’ve seen a variety of approaches and attitudes over the years. Let’s break it down into some of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the SWOT exercise.

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How Flexible Financial Planning Can Improve Your Business Performance

“The financial crisis and subsequent recession turned these efforts on their head, rendering almost every five-year plan into worthless scraps of paper,” according to the article.

While this opinion is apparently common, and may be true, it uncovers a need for both long-term planning and flexible adaptation.

Organizations clearly project for a reason. The reality is that, major worldly events, economic changes and other news worthy events happen all the time. It may not change your business overnight, but you can be sure change will happen over time.

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Innovating For the Numerator

The National Academy of Engineering identified fourteen “Grand Challenges for Engineering” that must be addressed in order to achieve a sustainable, economically robust, and politically stable future. (see the full list here) The challenges are a call-to-action for solutions to some of the most pressing issues in the 21st century: identifying safe and clean energy resources; providing for human health, nutrition and security; restoring and reinventing infrastructure for urban habitation; advancing computing power and capabilities; and developing new tools for teaching, learning, medicine and scientific discovery.

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We Were Once That Kid: Curious and Analytical

Although you’re now a grown up adult, you probably remember what your life was like when you were a child. I am referring to elementary school ages. We all can look back on what we were like then –somewhat naïve children. Imagine if you could go back in time and speak to yourself when you were that kid. What would you say to yourself? What advice would you give yourself knowing what you know now?

More specifically, what counsel or warnings would offer that would better prepare yourself to leverage analytics, big data and quantitative methods to help organizations improve their performance? More importantly, what would you say to yourself that would lead to a more fulfilling career and job prospects than you have now?

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