Chrome River CURRENTS

Carrying out an impeccable job as CFO is crucial to the well-being of your company. As CFO, your main duties include managing risk and analyzing your company’s finances. Your analyses and recommendations guide the company, and inappropriate suggestions based on analysis of inaccurate or delayed data can be disastrous for your company, and could lead to taking on undue risk or making poor budgeting decisions. Timely and correct data are essential for your job, but you may need to take some steps to ensure that you get the data you need whether you are analyzing the numbers from within your division or from a different or remote department or partner company.

Is visualization the key to proper use of big data? Bar charts, treemaps, scatter plots – these are all visualization tools that put data into perspective, but do they drive the point home for those looking to extract meaningful information? The answer is to create a multidimensional view of the data that is more intuitive. This approach is Interactive Visualization.

Cloud technology has revolutionized nearly every industry - from technology to healthcare to hospitality to food service to telecommunications. Small and large businesses, the government and educational institutions depend on cloud-based software applications for many organizational functions. Cloud-based applications enable or enhance activities like more robust data storage, collaborative projects, automated marketing and more streamlined billing.

Traditionally, CFOs and their finance teams stayed narrowly in the arena of management. They strategically employed data-driven analytics to manage the business from the upper levels. As the ability to collect and analyze data has exponentially expanded, CFOs are increasingly in a position to aid their organizations in improving profitability and efficiency and more granular levels.

When it comes to survival of the midsize firm, you have two choices. You can be ruthless. Or you can die. Time is your biggest resource and the one most often abused. Because of the precarious spot in which midsize companies are wedged, inefficient use of time will kill you every time.

When it comes to hiring finance staff members, the traditional hiring process may not be enough to ensure you’re getting the best candidate for the job. Candidates may shine at the interviews, ace your proficiency tests and amaze with their litany of technical skills, but you won’t really know what they're all about unless you throw a real-world financial dilemma into their lap.

There's an evolution (or maybe a revolution) of sorts taking place as CIOs look to enhance the value of their already critical organizational role. In many ways, CIOs are poised to become internal “venture capitalists.” This actually makes complete sense when the functions of a typical CIO are considered.

In a recent comprehensive study conducted by the Independent Expert Group on Expenses, one out of every five charities answering survey questions posed by IEG stated that they "did not have an expense policy established.“ Response comments provided by IEG indicated that the Group considered "expense management part of basic internal controls and good governance" and further stated that "charities need to be encouraged to rectify this matter.”

Analytics platforms are essential tools in today’s organizations. Business leaders rely on them to facilitate fast, effective decision-making, while operations managers use such tools to deliver smooth execution of day-to-day processes. But it’s a mistake to think of analytics software as some kind of magic bullet.

From evolving audit standards to the future of new technologies, a recent Accounting Today article solicits insights from five industry experts addressing the latest trends in accounting. Today’s regulatory environment is rapidly changing and growing more complex. But such new technologies as cloud-based AP automation and expense management software are helping accounting departments keep pace and improve performance.