Strategic Finance articles from November 2007

Strategic Finance archives from November 2007

Supporting our CMAs.(Perspectives)(Certified Management Accountant )
November 1, 2007... One of the best decisions I ever made in my career was to become a Certified Management Accountant (CMA[R]). The certification equipped me with a broad knowledge base and helped to hone and validate my management accounting skills. The...

A can of worms.(Best Practices)(presidential elections)
November 1, 2007... As the country lurches toward the next Presidential election, decision making is highlighted as a key aspect of leadership. But all too often discussion focuses on the process--information gathering and sifting, dialogue and distinctions,...

Siemens AG is the latest fallen ethics idol.(Ethics)
November 1, 2007... Siemens AG is a huge German-based conglomerate that provides electronics and engineering products and services worldwide for use in markets such as telecommunications, industrial automation, power generation, and transportation. With the sale...

Fraud remains pervasive, PWC study shows.(NEWS)
November 1, 2007... Despite regulations and increased efforts to implement good internal controls, fraud remains a major threat to companies worldwide, a recent study by Price-water house Coopers found. In fact, nearly half of the 5,400 global companies surveyed...

Being a team player.(NEWS)(important characteristic of a team player )(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... What's the most important characteristic of a team player these days? It's the ability to meet deadlines, according to 40% of executives polled by Accountemps last month. Other characteristics cited are avoiding politics (25%), being pleasant...

IMA signs cooperative agreement with NAF.(EDUCATION NEWS)(Institute of Management Accountants to enter into an agreement with National Academy Foundation )(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... The Institute of Management Accountants (IMA[R]) recently signed a national cooperative agreement with the National Academy Foundation (NAF) to find ways to promote opportunities for young people to learn about management accounting career...

SEC moves closer to mandating XBRL.(GOVERNMENT)(Securities and Exchange Commission)(eXtensible Business Reporting Language )
November 1, 2007... SEC Chairman Chris Cox's announcement at the end of September that a private sector group has finally translated U.S. GAAP into the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) seems to set the agency on a clear path toward requiring all large...

Notice of termination.
November 1, 2007... On July 20, 2007, the IMA Committee on Ethics voted to terminate the membership of the following individual for an ethics violation, as provided in Section 5 of the IMA Bylaws: Richard J. Antoniotti, member #61933.

How good companies go bad.(BOOKS)
November 1, 2007... There are times when a company that was once at the forefront of its industry will find itself struggling for survival. Once seemingly unable to do wrong, it is now gasping for air. So what happened? Where did it go wrong? That's exactly what...

CMA Examination in Arabic.(ADVOCACY)(Certified Management Accountant)
November 1, 2007... Most of you are probably familiar with the article "IMA's Strategic Initiatives" that appeared in the August 2007 issue of Strategic Finance. It told readers about the strategic initiatives that are part of the organization's Strategic Plan for...

From workout to winning; Sacred Heart University shares the lessons it learned from instituting a ge-style workout and offers tips for other nonprofits who want to try one, too.
November 1, 2007... Executives from General Electric (GE) have trained administrators, faculty, and staff at Sacred Heart University to use the GE workout process to identify and improve inefficient operational processes. Implementing workout in a not-for-profit...

Why project accounting? It's accounting for knowledge workers in the new millennium.(Accounting)
November 1, 2007... Think about what your parents and grandparents did for a living. Chances are they were farmers or factory workers for at least a portion of their careers. The era of manufacturing and farming, however, has given way to one of knowledge...

Consulting the consultants--using external services strategically.(Statistical table)
November 1, 2007... External services are part of the professional accountant's toolbox for achieving organizational goals, but approaches to the use and purchase of such services vary dramatically. Last year, armed with financing from the IMA Foundation for...

Test your ethical judgment; making the right choices can sometimes be difficult.(Ethics)
November 1, 2007... Accounting ethical lapses associated with financial shenanigans were in the spotlight earlier this decade, tarnishing the reputation of all accountants. But now, "Nobody cares much about accounting scandals anymore," as Herb Greenberg reported...

Private companies cash in on "private" insurance many are self-insuring risks through a "pure captive.".(Risk Management)
November 1, 2007... When Stephen Francis, president of CQG, Inc., a Denver, Colo.-based company that provides real-time financial data and analytics software to financial traders, saw that his insurance risk program neglected coverage for risks specific to his...

How has SOX affected foreign private issuers? Although some costs have risen, there also have been opportunities to improve financial reporting and disclosure.(International)
November 1, 2007... As management accountants know, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) was Congress's response to the wave of corporate scandals, such as WorldCom and Enron, that had begun to devastate investor confidence in the U.S. The law was intended to...

Dealing with poorly formatted data in excel.(Excel)
November 1, 2007... Last month I discussed sorting in Excel. But in order to sort your data, the data set needs to be properly arranged. This month I'll take a look at a common problem and show you amazing ways to whip similar data sets into shape. Filling in...

Tools of the trade.(Asus W5Fe laptops)
November 1, 2007... The Asus W5Fe from Asus Technology, Ltd., is the first of several laptops that offer the SideShow feature. SideShow runs on Microsoft's Vista operating system, and it's essentially an external LCD display that can be viewed without booting up...

The big blue onion.(Tech Forum)
November 1, 2007... * Recently, eWeek celebrated ViolaWWW's 15th birthday with a list of their candidates for the top Web technologies of all time. Viola was an early patriarch/matriarch of our modern Web browsers. It was developed by Pei-Yuan Wei, a student at...

It's time for XBRL GL pilots.(XBRL)(Column)
November 1, 2007... In the February 2007 column ("It's Time for GL-enabled Software"), I issued a call for action asking accounting software and ERP systems vendors to become actively involved in the process of XBRL Global Ledger adoption in order to help make all...

The 2007 Ig Nobels.(End Note)
November 1, 2007... So you think those people in Research & Development have the life? Fungible deadlines, work that's more like freeform play, and a permanent excuse to occupy yourself with the impractical--it all sounds pretty interesting and unusual, doesn't...