Strategic Finance articles from December 2007

Strategic Finance archives from December 2007

Going Global.(Message from the Chair)(Global Conference by Institute of Management Accountants )
December 1, 2007... Organizations these days like to talk about their overarching vision--say, to be a nation's leading consumer electronics company or the world's best provider of financial services. At the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA [R]), we...

One hundred.(Best Practices)(Column)
December 1, 2007... It's hard to believe that this is our 100th column. This monthly ritual began with an impulse to pass on hard-won lessons, but it has turned out to be more an opportunity to learn-an invaluable catalyst on our journey of becoming more open and...

Who should be blamed the most for the subprime loan scandal?(Ethics)
December 1, 2007... Once again, an ethics scandal has resulted in a number of people who need to bear some blame. The list of major contributors to the subprime loan fiasco includes many of the usual suspects: greedy CEOs, disengaged boards of directors,...

Bryant University's 7th Annual XBRL Conference.(Advocacy)(Conference notes)
December 1, 2007... I had a great opportunity to expand my knowledge about XBRL from an internal reporting perspective by attending Bryant University's 7th Annual XBRL Conference in October. The theme for this year's Conference was "Meeting Challenges and...

CFOs, controllers, and IFRS.(NEWS)(International Financial Reporting Standards )
December 1, 2007... Last month the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) voted to let foreign private issuers in the U.S. file their financial statements with the SEC without reconciling them to U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) as long as they...

Coaching, mentoring help retain employees.(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... What methods are employers using to retain high-potential and front-line employees? According to a recent survey by Clear- Rock, an outplacement and executive coaching firm headquartered in Boston, the top five ways to retain...

How about a database as a financial tool?(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2007... It was nice to read the article on using Microsoft Access in the October issue of Strategic Finance. Such articles serve as a corrective to what I believe is the overuse of Excel in Finance environments. In fact, it was ironic that the response...

Dems unhappy with "no reconciliation".(GOVERNMENT)(Editorial)
December 1, 2007... Despite opposition from the Democratic-controlled Congress, the Securities & Exchange Commission went ahead and decided to allow foreign companies with shares traded on a U.S. exchange to report their financials based on International Financial...

Corporate Sustainability.(BOOKS)(Book review)
December 1, 2007... The challenges and opportunities facing companies today in the area of sustainability are more complex and have greater potential impact than ever before. Making Sustainability Work, written by Marc J. Epstein and published by Berrett-Koehler...

Six-Shot Economics: how many shots do you have at shareholder value creation?(Cover Story)
December 1, 2007... Perhaps it's because I've been living in Arizona for many years, but the analogy between business leaders and Old-West quick-draw artists appeals to me. Of course, gunslinging has a bad connotation in business, where planning and strategy are...

Toward compliant performance: you need to tightly link enterprise risk management and compliance initiatives with BPM principles and practices.(Performance Management)
December 1, 2007... THE RULES OF THE GAME HAVE CHANGED. Increasing regulatory pressures and legal requirements have forced finance professionals to intensify their focus on internal controls and compliance. But at what cost? Now there's a way to assure effective...

Target costing at a consumer products company: this global manufacturer uses it to introduce new products.(Cost Management)
December 1, 2007... Does the following sound familiar? Your company has developed a new product. You determined the product cost, added a markup, and came up with a price of $5.82 per unit. Your competitors, however, sell comparable products for less than $5.00...

Boosting management accounting's stature on campus.(Opinion)
December 1, 2007... The accounting profession has repeatedly faced calls for change in order to remain a relevant and vital part of our economic system. A shifting economic and technological environment threatens to make some traditional accounting functions...

Reflections on a half-century as an accounting professional.(Opinion)
December 1, 2007... DECEMBER 31, 2007, will bring to an end my more than 54 years of involvement in the accounting profession. On that date I will complete six years as a trustee of the Financial Accounting Foundation (FAF), and earlier in the fall I taught my...

Customize all future workbooks.(Excel)
December 1, 2007... Every time I create a new workbook, I find myself making the same changes to the worksheet before using it. For example, I adjust the margins, the scaling, and the text in the header and footer. Using the techniques in this article, you can...

Tools of the trade.
December 1, 2007... There are three unusual qualities that recommend the Flip Video Camcorders from Pure Digital Technologies. First, they're about the size of a deck of cards so they disappear with little weight into a shirt or coat pocket. Second is the quality...

Can you tell what letter that is?(Tech Forum)(Editorial)
December 1, 2007... At first, computers had their own Esperanto, and it looked like the lingua digita would achieve something humans have never been quite able to manage--universal communication. The motherboard's alphabet had only two characters (real Esperanto...

XBRL: the logistics of moving data.(XBRL)(Extensible Business Reporting Language)
December 1, 2007... XBRL is often compared to the barcode to exemplify the benefits generated by embracing a standard, and yet the attention of XBRL adopters both in the user and software vendor communities is focused primarily on its use for external and...

The XBRL US GAAP Taxonomy project needs your input.(ADVOCACY)(Generally Accepted Accounting Principles(GAAP))
December 1, 2007... Most of you are probably familiar with the article about the XBRL US Market Outreach Working Group that appeared in the Streetwise section of the October 2007 issue of Strategic Finance. It was mentioned in the article that IMA received an...

Machine Beauty.(End Note)
December 1, 2007... A serious discussion about the beautiful machine began in earnest about 10 years ago with David Gelernter's small book Machine Beauty: Elegance and the Heart of Technology. The computer studies professor from Yale insists that "beauty is more...