finance

The benefits of charge-backs

Wed, 16 May 2007 20:01:38 -0400

Although business leaders see charge-backs as a way to drive down IT costs, there are other advantages, including improving capability as a business and being more in tune with IT. On the IT side, many believe cost transparency creates a closer partnership with the business; by charging back IT, you are essentially highlighting to business managers what IT is valuable to them and making them more aware of the consequences of their own IT consumption in a simple, transparent way. Charging back IT also gives business managers the information they need to make sound decisions. What's more, the practice also helps to change the perception of IT from being just an overhead or a cost center to a valuable contributor to the business. But if you're going to use charge-backs, make sure they're driven by the board and not solely by the finance or IT department. Second, the IT department must be capable of measuring usage of its own systems. And lastly, determine what level of detail IT usage should be measured in.

Read more about IT charge-backs:
- read the article at Computer Weekly

ALSO NOTED: Narrowing IT's gender gap; Tackling laptop security;

Tue, 15 May 2007 20:01:38 -0400

> How to narrow IT's gender gap. Article

> Tackling laptop security. Article

> Coaching for leadership. Blog

> Is mobile CRM ready for lift-off? Article

> Study: Security spending is still growing. Article

> BPM pulse survey: IT vs. Finance. Article

> Computer Security: Five best practices for layered defense. Article

And Finally… Attracting the twentysomething worker. Article

Staff with IT, financial acumen hard to find

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 20:01:39 -0400

As IT organizations work to better align themselves with the business, CIOs are finding that they need IT staff with a strong mix of financial and technical skills. They are also finding that professionals with IT and financial acumen are hard to find. One solution is teaching existing staff the skills that they will need, including ITIL service management, best practices, customer relationship management, financial management and portfolio analysis. Another solution is finding creative ways to bring IT and business people together.

Read more about the difficulty in finding the right IT/finance mix:
- read the article at ComputerWorld

Moving up the corporate ladder

Sun, 08 Apr 2007 20:01:39 -0400

Climbing from CIO to COO can be accomplished if you follow some tried and true advice. First, make sure you have the skills to do everything a Chief Operating Officer does before trying to reach your goal and make it obvious to the CEO that you have what it takes. To do that, provide leadership beyond IT, learn to talk finance, demonstrate your knowledge of the business, let your boss know you're ambitious and recruit and build an IT team (because if you can build an organization that the rest of the company can admire, you will build credibility for the COO role). And finally, choose the right company and ensure your goal is actually attainable. For example, if you work for a company where IT is core to the business, you have better chance of growing beyond the CIO role.

Learn more about moving from CIO to COO:
- read the column at CIO

ALSO:
- read this on reaching the next level
- this about clawing your way to the top
- this about climbing the corporate ladder
- and this on climbing the executive ladder

Finding key information fast

Sun, 01 Apr 2007 20:01:36 -0400

Missing valuable information is an unfortunate byproduct of today's massive corporate data stores. To make sure you can find information wherever it resides at a moment's notice, first understand if you're dealing with structured or unstructured data. Data from a company's logistics, finance or marketing activities can be pulled into a database that can then be fed to executives using a reporting system or dashboard. For a dashboard to work, though, a reporting system has to integrate data from separate systems, which must themselves be sophisticated enough to export it. The alternative is to move to a single platform with built-in reporting capabilities. And once you've moved to a unified platform, you have to persuade the employees to use the new system. But the biggest challenge of all is collecting tacit information that exists in people's heads. Depending on the size of the company, wikis, blogs and corporate social networking software could be a way forward.

To learn more about information access:
- read the article at Silicon

Clawing your way to the top

Wed, 21 Feb 2007 19:01:39 -0500

Getting to the vaunted level of CIO is a real accomplishment, but is that the pinnacle? How viable is it to think about becoming a COO or CEO someday? It's certainly been done, but a CIO doesn't make the jump nearly as often as those from finance and marketing. Many CIOs have what it takes do become CEO, however, with their understanding of key business issues. It might seem puzzling, then, that it's not happening more often, but a plethora of misconceptions and prejudices certainly aren't helping. The CIO is a fairly new role within a corporation and many don't understand or respect it. They are, in effect, somewhat of an unknown leadership quantity.

Read more about making the jump to CEO:
- read the article at ComputerWeekly.com

Intelligent business intelligence

Tue, 30 Jan 2007 19:01:39 -0500

Business intelligence tools have been steadily improving and they are closer than ever before to delivering what companies really need to help further their business. Over the past few years, many business intelligence tools have begun offering greater functionality and data mining capabilities. Today, cutting-edge business intelligence tools take a holistic approach to the business, incorporating what's important to sales and marketing as well as IT and finance. They are also easier to use, give managers the ability to look at data in myriad ways and create useful predictive analysis. The best tools have vital indicators presented in such a way that you can see what's important and drill down for further information, usually in a dashboard format.

To learn more about what's state-of-the-art in business intelligence tools:
- read the article at IT-Director.com

New tech roles coming into play

Thu, 18 Jan 2007 19:01:36 -0500

Given all the economic optimism in IT these days, with bigger budgets and more projects planned, tech leaders are likely readying a hiring list to move forward. But that list likely won't just include the usual tech skills and roles. Companies are looking to create brand-new roles as well, such as an IT Finance leader and even a "Vendor Manager." Find out what these new roles are responsible for and why you may end up putting them on that hiring list this year.

For more on new tech roles in play:
-read the feature at CIO

SPOTLIGHT: UK firms lacking in IT compliance

Sun, 29 Oct 2006 19:01:34 -0500

It seems that compliance isn't en vogue over in the UK these days. A new survey reports that over 70 percent of tech managers at companies in the finance, retail, healthcare and logistics segments aren't sure if their current software applications are compliant with license requirements or IT standards such as ISO 19770. Article

SPOTLIGHT: Security headaches loom with e-health efforts

Sun, 18 Jun 2006 20:01:34 -0400

There's been a steady push on the healthcare industry to go digital and get information, services and processes online for quicker patient response and better medical care. But, the security issues around online medical data are still a big hurdle to jump as stolen identification could lead to theft of medical services and misuse of prescription programs. As experts note, the security threat is greater than in other industries, such as finance, because patients rarely have the opportunity check their medical files for problems or issues--so theft could occur and go undetected for a long while. Article