Ads by TechWords

See your link here
Receive the latest technology news and information.
IT Management
Computerworld Daily News (First Look and Wrap-Up)
Computerworld Blogs Newsletter
The Weekly Top 10
Cloud Computing
View all newsletters




Privacy Policy
 

CFOs Race to Keep Up With New Technology

Understanding IT now key to good finances

February 26, 2001 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld - Walter Leen still remembers the days when the IT department was called data processing and it reported to the chief financial officer.

"It was just used as a big, fast calculator and a fast typewriter," Leen said, who recently retired from his job as vice president of internal auditing at Itasca, Ill.-based Enesco Group Inc. "But the CFOs had no idea of its capabilities to provide management information."

Now, CFOs - whose focus is often on the bottom-line results of specific markets but not the technological arcana that affect them - need to understand new tools that can give them a clearer picture of their companies' financial health, according to Ian Rubin, an analyst at IDC in Framingham, Mass.

E-commerce, mergers and acquisitions, and capital-intensive IT investments also require the CFO to stay on top of the latest technology trends.

That doesn't mean they have to know how to program a Web site, Rubin said, but the more they know about new technologies, the better positioned they are to judge the success of any particular project.

Willingness to Adapt

For example, San Rafael, Calif.-based Autodesk Inc., which sells AutoCAD and other design software, gets half of its business through the Web, said CFO Steve Cakebread. In addition, about a third of the company's suppliers take payments in electronic form.

"And we're always talking to our suppliers - 'You need to get more automated; your money is going to get to you faster,' " he said.

Dramatic growth, fueled by the Web, has also forced Lynn Atchison, CFO at business information provider Hoovers Inc. in Austin, Texas, to be more flexible in her job. "How do I, as a CFO, ensure that our site is going to produce revenues?" she asked. "One year, we think subscriptions are the main thing. The next, it's advertising. Now, I think it's gone full circle - back to subscriptions."

At a minimum, she said, today's CFOs need to understand the vocabulary of the Internet and how to use new technologies to launch a marketplace.

To help CFOs meet the increasing challenges of their jobs, IT departments need to take a more active role in educating them, said Anita Tilley, managing director of KPMG Consulting LLC in McLean, Va.

"Most finance departments that I have had the pleasure of working with have done a fairly good job of Finance 101 for their organizations," she said. "On the other hand, IT is dealing with a phenomenally fast-changing environment." However, IT organizations are starting to catch up, she



Jump to comments

Data Mining

Additional Resources

EFD vs. HDD - What You Need to Know
WHITE PAPER
Enterprise flash drives provide a new Tier 0 storage layer capable of delivering high I/O performance at a very low latency. Proper use of EFDs in an Oracle environment can deliver increased performance compared to fibre channel drives. Read the recommendations for identification of the best DB components for EFDs.
Gartner Research Report: Magic Quadrant for Application Delivery Controllers, 2009
WHITE PAPER
The market for products to improve the delivery of application software over networks remains dynamic and innovative. Vendors focused on solving enterprises' most-pressing application problems have become the top players.
Eight Criteria for Server Load Balancing
WHITE PAPER
Server load balancers are a simple yet highly effective means to scale an application environment while ensuring its availability. Today's solutions should also address application performance and security. Read about the top eight criteria you should consider when choosing a server load balancer and how Citrix NetScaler meets those requirements.

White Papers & Webcasts

The Workday User Experience Video
Watch Workday's Creative Director, Scott Lietzke, discuss the business-centered design philosophy at Workday.

Business Process Framework Demo
Learn about Configurable Business Processes and Calculated Fields. Watch Now!

Manager Experience Demo
Go beyond self-service solutions to perform more effectively. Watch Now.

Faster, Cheaper and Easier to Maintain
Can you afford not to upgrade your servers to today's advanced, energy-efficient technologies?  


IT Jobs