Sports and Analytics: Vision for Tomorrow

Imagine traveling back in time to attend a major sports event in the early 20th Century. The game-day broadcast may be available, but only on the radio. You may be able to buy hot dogs, but there are no fancy drinks or snacks. Forget about large-screen monitors or billboards. And the only thing that fans bring to the game is themselves—no smartphones, and no tweeting.

Now, contrast that image against the world of sports today. The comparisons are amazing, and they remind me of how computer systems no more powerful than a pocket calculator were able to guide astronauts in theApollo mission to the moon.

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Accountant Pirates of the Caribbean

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.

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A Passionate Appeal for Activity-Based Costing (ABC)

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.

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Government Accounting Systems: Where Will We Be in 20 Years?

Government accounting systems have evolved drastically over the past few millennia from the abacus to the modern spreadsheet. Technology has put the evolution in hyper drive. In addition, recent advances in business intelligence tools as well as big data and predictive analytics have modernized financial systems to help companies make smarter and better business decisions.

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?

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Finance Teams in Asia: How They Stack Up Against Global Leaders

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…

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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 outdated numbers.

Fortunately, times are changing.

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Rolling Forecasts: A Business Imperative for 2014 and Beyond

Rolling forecasts and flexible plans can help companies adapt more quickly to business changes.

Change is the only constant. Yet we continue to execute annual static budgets and five-year strategic plans because “that’s what we’ve always done”. The reality is that the business climate changes daily, making assumptions that were made last quarter or last year moot. In fact, many annual budgets and plans become outdated as soon as they are finalized, often after months of effort.

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